Karl Appuhn is Associate Professor of History and Italian Studies at New York University, where he also directs the Science and Society Program. He earned his PhD in History at Northwestern University. His research focuses on the environmental history of early modern of Venice. His Book, A Forest on the Sea: Environmental Expertise in Renaissance Venice won the American Historical Association's Herbert Baxter Adams Prize, the Renaissance Society of America's Delmas Prize, and the Forest History Society's Weyerhaeuser Prize. His current research is on the history of veterinary medicine in eighteenth-century Italy.

Karl has won awards for both undergraduate and graduate teaching at NYU, where he teaches courses on Renaissance Italy, early modern science and medicine, animal history, environmental history, and environmental humanities.

Born in California, he grew up in Italy and attended Italian primary and secondary schools.