Julia Haggerty to present final event in 2025-26 provost’s lecture series at Montana State on April 21

BOZEMAN - Montana State University's premier lecture series will wrap up for the 2025-26 academic year on Tuesday, April 21, with an address by Julia Haggerty, head of the Department of Earth Sciences in the College of Letters and Science.

The event, part of the annual Provost's Distinguished Lecturer Series, will be held in the Museum of the Rockies' Hager Auditorium and will begin at 7 p.m., followed by a reception. All events in the series are free and open to the public.

Haggerty, who grew up in Boston, will touch on elements of the personal and academic journey that brought her to MSU in a talk titled "Shared Prosperity in Times of Transition: Resource Regions and the Practice of Neighboring." Her work has long focused on remote resource regions - areas with small populations and resource-based economies that are frequently characterized as "left-behind" places in national and global conversations. She noted there are many examples of the phenomenon in Montana and the interior West.

Her interest stemmed from a childhood in New England, where her parents purchased a retired dairy farm and she first acknowledged her deep love of rural places.

"I initially planned to be a veterinarian so I could work with farmers," Haggerty recalled. "While working as a wildlife tech in New Mexico to prepare to apply to vet school, I discovered the tensions that can exist between livelihoods and environmental protection in rural areas, and that is what started me on this academic path."

While pursuing her doctorate in history at the University of Colorado in the early 2000s, Haggerty came to MSU as a visiting scholar. After finishing her degree and postdoctoral studies in New Zealand, she returned to Bozeman and became a part of the earth sciences faculty in 2013. She has served as department head since July 2025.

Haggerty said Montana is a perfect place to do work like hers - exploring the dynamics of crucial natural resource areas and their surrounding communities.

"My work is about how resource-dependent regions experience big shifts in markets and policy, specifically those affecting demand for energy and natural resources," she said. "Whether the motivation is climate mitigation or a quest for domestic mineral supplies, what are the implications for how people make a living in remote rural places, and their relationships with centers of capital and political power? Montana is a case in point, and because I work at MSU, I've been able to bring that perspective to national and even international policy discussions."

Her MSU experience has also allowed her to facilitate hands-on research experiences for her students. From Winnett to Colstrip and the Crow Reservation, she and her students have conducted community-based research in parts of Montana that exemplify the overlap of resources, economy and society.

Those students, and Haggerty herself, are part of one of MSU's most diverse departments. The Department of Earth Sciences encapsulates snow science, geology, water research, volcanology, paleontology and more. That breadth, coupled with MSU's endless web of connections across the states, is fertile ground for connection, collaboration and inspiration. Haggerty hopes her lecture will help attendees to open themselves to the same.

"I'm using the idea of neighboring to highlight the importance of building and sustaining economic ties that support mutual, long-term benefits between central regions and less-connected places. I'll also explain the importance of the land-grant model to how I study and teach these ideas," she said.

"I hope people who attend will be inspired by the opportunities for resilience in resource regions and their continued importance to our state and nation and will leave excited about staying in relationship with rural places."

The Provost's Distinguished Lecturer Series recognizes outstanding MSU faculty for their creative scholarship and leadership. More information and the full lineup for the 2025-26 series can be found at https://www.montana.edu/news/24752.