Nicolo Paolo Ludovice works on environmental history (with focus on animal history and animal-human relations), the history of science, technology, and medicine (with focus on biomedicine, public health, and zoonoses), food history, and health-environmental humanities, with the Philippines as his geographical focus. He completed his PhD in History at HKU where his doctoral project investigated the history of animals in medicine and health in the nineteenth- and the twentieth-century Philippines. 

His research has received prizes, including the Wang Gungwu Prize for Research Postgraduate Students by the University of Hong Kong (2022) and the prestigious Young Historian’s Prize 2022 by the National Commission for Culture and the Arts, the Republic of the Philippines. His thesis is also shortlisted for the ICAS Book Prize 2023 – Best Dissertation in the Humanities by the International Convention of Asia Scholars.

RESEARCH

Nicolo is currently finishing a monograph based on his PhD research on animals and modern health in the Philippines. His second project is on the epidemic resilience of Southeast Asian cities.

Research Interests

• Environmental history and animal history
• History of science, technology and medicine (biomedicine, zoonosis, public health)
• History of the Philippines
• Food and foodways
• Health-environmental humanities

PUBLICATIONS

Articles

Delina, L., Ludovice, N. P. P., Gaviola, J., & Cagoco-Guiam, R. (2023). “Living with climate and state fragility in a “chaotic paradise:” Securitizing livelihoods in the Philippines’ Cotabato River Basin.” Climate Risk Management, 100558. Doi: 10.1016/j.crm.2023.100558

Ludovice, N. P. P. and Delina, L. (2023). “From concessions to competition: A journey through the evolution of the Philippine electric grid system, 1892-2021.” Electricity Journal 36 (7), 107319. Doi: 10.1016/j.tej.2023.107319

Ludovice, N. P. P. (2021). “The Ice Plant Cometh: The Insular Cold Storage and Ice Plant, Frozen Meat, and the Imperial Biodeterioration of American Manila, 1900-1935.” Global Food History 7(2), 115-139. Doi: 10.1080/20549547.2021.1921466

Ludovice, N. P. P. (2021). “COVID-19 as a Zoonotic Moment: Placing the Animals at the Forefront of Histories of Pandemics.” Working Papers on Critical Disaster Studies. Series I: Historical Responses to Covid-19, No. 2. Initiative for Critical Disaster Studies, New York University.

Ludovice, N. P. P. (2019). “The Carabao and the Encounter of the Law in Nineteenth-Century Philippines.” Society & Animals, 27(3), 307-26. Doi: 10.1163/15685306-12341557.

Book Chapters

Ludovice, N. P. P. (forthcoming). “Dairying Dependence: Industrialization and Ecological Change During the Postwar Philippines.” Halo-Halo Ecologies: The Emergent Environments Behind Filipino Food. Edited by Alyssa Paredes and Marvin Joseph Montefrio. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai’i Press.

Velasquez, C., Urwin, J., Ludovice, N. P. P., Kauma, B., Tamang, S., & Porter, J. (2024). “Future Directions in Environmental History.” Routledge Handbook of Environmental History. Edited by Emily O’Gorman, Sandra Swart, William San Martin, and Mark Carey. London and New York: Routledge.

Ludovice, N. P. P. (2023). “Foreword: Dogs in the Philippines.” In Dogs in Philippine History. By Ian Christopher B. Alfonso. Manila: Philippine Historical Association, Project Saysay Inc., and Archivo 1984.

Book Reviews

Ludovice, N. P. P. (2020). Review of Translating the Body: Medical Education in Southeast Asia, edited by Hans Pols, C. Michele Thompson, and John Harley Warner. East Asian Science, Technology and Society: An International Journal, 177-181. Doi: 10.1215/18752160-7498555

Opinion Pieces

“Controlling the Narrative: Historical Distortion and the Case of the Philippines.” Asia Global Online (13 October 2022)

“Coronavirus: Why We Need to Rethink About Our Relationship With Wild Animals,” Hong Kong Free Press (19 February 2020)

TEACHING AND COURSES TAUGHT

• HIST2190 Animals in History
• HIST2192 Introduction to Modern Southeast Asian History
• HIST2194 Food and Empire in Colonial Asia
• HIST2203 The Philippines and the Asia-Pacific World
• HIST4015 The Theory and Practice of History