Education

PhD, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2014
MPhil, University of Cambridge, 2007
BA, Columbia University, 2006

Biography

David Singerman is a historian of science, technology, medicine, and capitalism. His first book, Unrefined: How Capitalism Reinvented Sugar will be published in September 2025 by the University of Chicago Press. His second book project is a new history of drugs and performance in sports.

His research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, Social Science Research Council, and Chemical Heritage Foundation, among others. In 2015 his dissertation was awarded prizes for best dissertation in business history by the Business History Conference and the Association of Business Historians (UK). Before coming to UVA he was a postdoctoral associate at Rutgers University and a research associate at Harvard Business School.

Photo by Chris Taylor / U.S. Department of the Treasury

Publications

Zotero: https://www.zotero.org/davidsingerman/55144

ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0001-5365-5815

Publications

Book

• Unrefined: How Capitalism Reinvented Sugar (University of Chicago Press, forthcoming September 2025). Part of the Synthesis series in the history of chemistry.

Peer-reviewed articles and chapters

• "Modern Food as Ranked Food: Who's Afraid of the Dark Sugar?," in Acquired Tastes: Stories About the Origins of Modern Food, ed. Benjamin Cohen, Anna Zeide, and Michael Kideckel (MIT Press, 2021)
• "The Reproducibility Crisis in the Age of Digital Medicine" (with Aaron Stupple and Leo Anthony Celi), npj Digital Medicine 2, no. 1 (January 29, 2019): 2.
• "Sugar machines and the fragile infrastructure of commodities in the nineteenth century," Osirisvol. 33 (2018), special issue on "Science and Capitalism: Entangled Histories."
• "The Limits of Chemical Control in the Caribbean Sugar Factory," Radical History Review no. 127, "Political Histories of Technoscience," January 2017.
• "Keynesian Eugenics and the Goodness of the World," Journal of British Studies 55, no. 3, July 2016.
• "Science, Commodities, and Corruption in the Gilded Age," Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 15, no. 3, July 2016. (Awarded the 2018 Treasury Historical Association 1500 Penn Prize.)
• "Inventing Purity in the Atlantic Sugar World, 1860-1930," Enterprise & Society 16, no. 4, December 2015.
• "'A Doubt is At Best an Unsafe Standard': Measuring Sugar in the Early Bureau of Standards," NIST Journal of Research, January 2007.

Public writing

• "Public Thinker: Lara Putnam Wants You to Knock on Your Neighbor's Door," Public Books online, July 2022.
• "There's Something Fishy about U.S.-Canada Trade Wars," The Atlantic online, 14 June 2018.
• "Zones of Doubt: What we can learn about trade policy from a misbegotten 19th century effort to quantify the chemical properties of wool," Bunk, 2 October 2018.
• "The Sugar Tramp: One man's obsession with the ephemera of his industry," Bunk, 10 January 2018.
• "The Other End of the Telescope: Considering astronomy's history from the shadow of the Arecibo Observatory reveals the discipline's intimate ties to imperialism," Bunk, 24 November 2017.
• "When Science Was Big: This year's Nobel Prize in physics is a blast from the past of Cold War-era research investment. Is that era gone for good?" Bunk, 19 October 2017.
• "The Shady History of Big Sugar," Op-Ed, The New York Times, 17 September 2016.

Reviews

• Review of Christy Spackman, The Taste of Water: Sensory Perception and the Making of an Industrialized Beverage (University of California Press, 2024), in H-Environment, forthcoming.
• Review of Theresa Levitt, Elixir: A Parisian Perfume House and the Quest for the Secret of Life(Harvard University Press, 2023), in Isis: A Journal of the History of Science Society, forthcoming.
• Review of Daniel B. Rood, The Reinvention of Atlantic Slavery: Technology, Labor, Race, and Capitalism in the Greater Caribbean (Oxford University Press, 2017), in the World Sugar History Newsletter 51 (March 2019).
• Review of Megan Raby, American Tropics: The Caribbean Roots of Biodiversity Science (University of North Carolina Press, 2017), New West Indian Guide 93, nos. 1-2 (2019).
• Review of Adrian Leonard & D. Pretel, eds., The Caribbean and the Atlantic World Economy: Circuits of Trade, Money and Knowledge, 1650-1914 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), in the World Sugar History Newsletter 49 (March 2018).
• Review of Bruce E. Baker and Barbara Hahn, The Cotton Kings: Capitalism and Corruption in Turn-of-the-Century New York and New Orleans (Oxford University Press, 2016), in American Nineteenth-Century History 19, no. 2 (2018).
• Review of April Merleaux, Sweetness and Civilization: American Empire and the Cultural Politics of Sweetness (University of North Carolina Press, 2015), in Agricultural History 90, no. 3 (summer 2016).
• Review of C. Allan Jones and Robert V. Osgood, From King Cane to the Last Sugar Mill: Agricultural Technology and the Making of Hawai'i's Premier Crop (University of Hawai'i Press, 2015), in Hawaiian Journal of History (2016).
• "Social History of Knowledge in the Slaveholding Atlantic World," review of Daniel Rood, "Plantation Technocrats: A Social History of Knowledge in the Slaveholding Atlantic World" (PhD dissertation, University of California - Irvine, 2010), at dissertationreviews.org, April 2012.

Teaching

Teaching awards and grants

• UVA Alumni Board of Trustees Teaching Award (2025), given to an assistant professor at the university for outstanding teaching
• Science and Society Co-Design Grant (2025-26), $10,500 to co-develop "Bread: A Human History" with Ali Guler (UVA Biology)

Courses in History

• HIST 9559, "Global History of Science, Technology, and Medicine" (Spring 2025)
• HIUS 2101, "Technologies of American Life" (Spring 2021, Spring 2022, Spring 2024)
• HIST 3501, "Introductory History Workshop: Sugar and Global History" (Spring 2023)
• HIST 1501, "The Global Financial Crisis of 2008" (Fall 2018, Fall 2020, Fall 2022)
• HIST 1501, "Corruption and Fraud" (Fall 2017)

Courses in American Studies

• AMST 3001, "Theories and Methods of American Studies" (Spring 2018, Fall 2018, Spring 2022, Fall 2022, Spring 2023, Spring 2024)
• AMST 3559, "Science and Democracy in America" (Spring 2018)

Courses in Arts & Sciences programs

• EGMT 1520: “Empirical and Scientific Engagement: Sourdough” (Spring 2026)
• EGMT 1520: "Empirical and Scientific Engagement: Information and Democracy" (Fall 2024, Spring 2025, Fall 2025)
• FORU 1500, "The World Gone Wrong: Introduction to the Forum" (Fall 2019)
• FORU 2500, "The World Gone Wrong: Forum Capstone" (Spring 2021)

External courses

• Four seminars at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales, Paris, May-June 2024 (link)
• “Sugar,” at Edible Environments summer school, Concordia University, Montreal, July 2018

Teaching Development

• Center for Teaching Excellence (CTE) Course Design Institute & IGNITE (2018), and various workshops
• Faculty Seminar on the Teaching of Writing (2019)
• UVA Library Course Enrichment Grant (2020)
• Casteen Faculty Fellowship in the Teaching of Ethics (2021)

Departmental teaching-related service

• Director of Undergraduate Program, American Studies (Fall 2024 - present)
• Assessment Director, American Studies (2019-present)
• Faculty co-organizer, MADCAP history of capitalism workshop (2017-2023)
• Faculty advisor, graduate-student-led department colloquium (2021-2023)

University/College teaching-related service

• Advisor to 2nd-year transfer students from UVA College at Wise (AY25-26)
• Faculty AI Guide Program (2024-present)
• College Fellows Program (Fall 2024-Spring 2026)
• Dean's Science and Society Advisory Committee (2025)
• Dean's Wayfinding Advisory Committee (2025)
• Reader, Harrison Undergraduate Research Award (2024, 2025)
• Organized and funded Corruption Lab (Democracy Initiative) graduate fellowship program (2020-2021)

Civic engagement

• Organized voter registration drive for all Engagements classes (Fall 2024)
• Visited 10-15 classes per year to register hundreds of students to vote (2017-2023)

Advising

• USOAR Research Mentorship Program students: 2
• PhD Mentoring Institute students: 2
• Dissertation committees
  • History: Abeer Saha, Ali Kelley, Chris Maternowski, Hank Lanphier
  • English: Annie Persons
  • Landscape architecture: William Shivers
  • Sociology: Joris Gjata
  • Physics: John Boyd
• DMP theses supervised: 3 American Studies, 3 History
• Harrison Undergraduate Research Awards supervised: 1
• Departmental advisees: 15 per year
• 1st and 2nd year advisees: 10 (2019-2021)