Ling Zhang, associate professor of history at Boston College in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, was selected to receive the 2017 George Perkins Marsh Prize from the American Society for Environmental History. The award is given to the author of the best book of the year dealing with some aspect of environmental history.
Dr. Zhang was honored for her book The River, the Plain, and the State: An Environmental Drama in Northern Song China, 1048-1128 (Cambridge University Press, 2016). The book centers on the flooding of the Yellow River in 1048, an event that changed the river’s course and impacted the lives of millions of residents. Over the next 60 years the population of the region decreased by 50 percent. In 1128, flooding once again changed the course of the river.
Dr. Zhang joined the faculty at Boston College in 2011. She earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in history at the University of Peking. Dr. Zhang completed a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in Chinese studies at the University of Cambridge in England.