The Bailey College of the Environment was delighted to welcome Brian Lander, assistant professor of history and environment & society, Brown University, for “The Political Ecology of China’s First Empire,” on February 29, 2024. Lander is the author of The King’s Harvest: A Political Ecology of China from the First Farmers to the First Empire. As an environmental historian who studies China, Lander focuses on how human societies came to dominate a number of regions, a process beginning with the domestication of plants and animals and continuing with the growth of states and empires. Lander’s current research follows the ecological history of the Qin Dynasty.