Dr. Timothy Grieve-Carlson, assistant professor of religion at Westminster College, has earned the institution’s 2025–2026 Henderson Lectureship Award.

Grieve-Carlson’s lecture, “The Icy Earth Swung Blind: A Human History of Climate Change,” will explore how people experience climate change—not as data or scientific models, but as a lived, human reality.

“In short, I wanted to know what climate change really feels like for people living through it, even when they don't have access to scientific data or weather forecasts,” said Grieve-Carlson. “Living through a period of climate change doesn’t always feel especially warm or cold, but it always feels unsettling, destabilizing and uncanny.”

The lecture draws from his current book project, under advance contract with Reaktion Books, which examines cultural responses to climate change during the Little Ice Age, a period of global cooling from roughly 1300 to 1850.

By analyzing historical sources such as religious writings, literature, artwork and records of daily life, Grieve-Carlson investigates how communities understood and responded to dramatic environmental changes before the modern concept of climate science existed.

“What would climate change feel like without modern technology or the idea of climate as a global system?” he said. “A closer look at the past helps us better understand not only historical moments of environmental crisis, but our own.”

Grieve-Carlson’s research focuses in part on how climate change disrupted social and cultural systems, contributing to famine, conflict and shifts in religious belief. Rather than experiencing climate change as gradual temperature increases, people often understood it as a breakdown of the natural and social order.

Grieve-Carlson, who joined Westminster College faculty in 2022, earned his undergraduate degree in anthropology and religious studies from Drew University and his master’s and Ph.D. in religious studies from Rice University in Houston. Prior to joining Westminster, he was a 2021-2022 fellow at the McNeil Center for Early American Studies at the University of Pennsylvania.

A published author, he has contributed to several academic journals, including American Religion, Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture; Correspondences: A Journal for the Study of Esotericism; and Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft.

“I was very surprised and honored that my colleagues took the time to nominate and select me for this award,” he said. “The Henderson Lectureship is a highlight of the academic year at the college, and I am grateful for the opportunity to share my work with the Westminster community.”

The Henderson Lecture was established by the late Dr. Joseph R. Henderson and his wife, Elizabeth, to encourage and recognize original research and scholarship among Westminster College faculty and to provide an opportunity to share that work with the academic community.

Henderson was a professor of education emeritus at Westminster, where he served as chair of the Department of Education and director of the graduate program.

Each year, faculty members may nominate themselves or others for the lectureship, which includes a stipend to support a specific research project. A faculty committee selects the recipient.

The 2025-2026 public lecture will be presented in October. 

For more information, please contact Grieve-Carlson at grievetr@westminster.edu.

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