Maya Peterson received her PhD from Harvard in 2011, with a dissertation under the direction of Terry Martin entitled "Technologies of Rule: Empire, Water, and the Modernization of Central Asia, 1867–1941." From 2011 to 2012, Peterson taught classes on Russian and Soviet history, as well as environmental history as a college fellow in Harvard's Department of the History of Science. Peterson was an assistant professor of history at the University of California at Santa Cruz, where she taught courses on Russian and European history, environmental history, and the history of the Silk Roads.

Peterson's work stood at the intersection of environmental history and imperial history. She contributed to ongoing debates about what empires are and what they do by bringing empire and environment together and exploring how a focus on the physical environment might open up new avenues for thinking about modernity and colonial relationships. Her research was supported by grants from the Social Science Research Council, Fulbright-Hays, and the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University.

Maya sadly passed away in 2021. Read more about her life and work here:

• Maya K. Peterson, In Memoriam
• Brendan Karch, "Maya K. Peterson (1980–2021)," Perspectives on History, 31 March 2022.