David Christian (historian)

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...Over the next fifty years we will see a return of the ancient tradition of "universal history"; but this will be a new form of universal history that is global in its practice and scientific in its spirit and methods.

David Christian in History and Theory, 2010 [16]

Philanthropist Bill Gates presented David Christian at the TED 2011 Conference in Long Beach, California. At that time, Christian announced his Big History Project initiative to teach the subject to secondary school students in Australia and the United States. Currently, he is serving as president of the International Big History Association.

Awards and honors

Publications

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OER Project is a non-profit open educational resources provider co-founded in 2011 by Bill Gates and David Christian. Originally known as Big History Project (BHP), the titular course was intended to enable the global teaching of the subject of Big History, which has been described as "the attempt to understand, in a unified way, the history of Cosmos, Earth, Life and Humanity." The company rebranded as OER Project in 2019 and now offers World History Project, Climate Project, and other courses in addition to the original BHP curriculum.

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Bibliography of world history (field).

References

  1. Christian, David (2004). Maps of Time: An Introduction to Big History. xxi: University of California Press. ISBN   0-520-23500-2.
  2. 1 2 3 Vanessa Thorpe (27 October 2012). "Big History theories pose latest challenge to traditional curriculum: Maverick academic's 'Big History' – which is backed by Bill Gates – is subject of new documentary". The Guardian. Retrieved 13 December 2012. Big History, a movement spearheaded by the Oxford-educated maverick historian David Christian,....
  3. Emily Eakin (12 January 2002). "For Big History, The Past Begins At the Beginning". The New York Times. Retrieved 13 December 2012.
  4. 1 2 Patricia Cohen (26 September 2011). "History That's Written in Beads as Well as in Words". The New York Times. Retrieved 13 December 2012.
  5. Ursula Goodenough (10 February 2011). "It's Time For A New Narrative; It's Time For 'Big History'". NPR. Retrieved 13 December 2012.
  6. 1 2 3 Rev. Michael Dowd (8 May 2012). "Big History Hits the Big Time". HuffPost. Retrieved 13 December 2012.
  7. Craig Benjamin of Grand Valley State University (July 2012). "Recent Developments in Big History". History of Science Society. Archived from the original on 9 January 2013. Retrieved 13 December 2012. Vol. 41, No. 3,
  8. "Mankind: The Story of All of Us". BBC History Magazine. 14 November 2012. Archived from the original on 2 October 2017. Retrieved 31 December 2012. ...a series informed by ideas around 'big history', David Christian's notion that we should look for common themes and patterns .....
  9. 1 2 Stephen Pritchard (3 November 2012). "For the record". The Observer. Retrieved 31 December 2012. Prof Christian ... left for San Diego in 2001 but returned to Macquarie in 2009.
  10. Christian, David. Origin Story: A Big History of Everything.
  11. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 "Professor David Christian". Macquarie University. Archived from the original on 8 January 2013. Retrieved 31 December 2012.
  12. The Teaching Company, David Christian Great Courses professor reference page. Retrieved Sept. 8, 2014
  13. "Communism Knew Diversity Before Gorbachev..." The New York Times. 12 February 1989. Retrieved 31 December 2012. ...As R. E. F. Smith and David Christian showed in 1984, in Bread and Salt, even dairy products were generally used as seasoning.....
  14. "Speakers David Christian: Historian". TED. 30 December 2012. ...David Christian is by training a historian of Russia and the Soviet Union, but since the 1980s he has become interested in world history on very large scales.
  15. "Big History: The Big Bang, Life on Earth, and the Rise of Humanity". The Teaching Company's Great Courses. Retrieved 15 May 2013.
  16. 1 2 3 David Christian (December 2010). "The Return of Universal History". History and Theory. Vol. 49. pp. 6–27. Archived from the original on 5 September 2012. Retrieved 31 December 2012. ...Today, however, there are many signs of a return to universal history...
  17. "Fellow Profile: David Christian". Australian Academy of the Humanities. Retrieved 1 May 2024.
  18. "A mark of distinction". This Week at Macquarie University. 7 October 2014. Archived from the original on 3 March 2016.
  19. Roger Munting and Stephen Rashid (4 July 2010). "REF Smith obituary". The Guardian. Retrieved 31 December 2012. ...His last monograph ... jointly written with David Christian...
  20. PD Smith (6 May 2005). "Time and headspace". The Guardian. Retrieved 31 December 2012. ...Christian has written a history of Wellsian scale, travelling from the physics of the Big Bang to our current nuclear age...
David Christian
Born
David Gilbert Christian

(1946-12-08) December 8, 1946 (age 77)
New York, N.Y. USA
OccupationHistorian
AwardsWorld History Association
Book Prize Maps of Time (2005)
Academic background
Education Oxford University
B.A., D. Phil (1974)
University of Western Ontario
M.A.
Alma mater Oxford University
Influences William H. McNeill [1]