Journal articles | Chapters | Short pieces | Collaborations
Journal articles
“The Cornbelt’s Last Open Pollinated Corn: Agricultural Extension and the Origins of the Hybrid Corn Seed Industry,” Plants, People, Planet 6, no. 5 (September 2024): 1024–1037.
“Stalking Wild Maize: Taxonomy, Plant Exploration, and the Search for Corn’s Origins in South America,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 54, no. 3 (Winter 2024): 323–349.
“Diversifying Description: Sweet Potato Science and International Agricultural Research after the Green Revolution,” Agricultural History 97, no. 3 (2023): 414–447.
“Breeding Confusion: Hybrid Seeds and Histories of Agriculture,” The Journal of Peasant Studies 50, no. 3 (2023): 1037–1055.
“The History of Seed Banks and the Hazards of Backup,” Social Studies of Science 52, no. 5 (2022): 664–688.
with Sarah Garland, “Turning Promise into Practice: Crop Biotechnology for Increasing Genetic Diversity and Climate Resilience,” PLoS Biology 20, no. 7 (2022): e3001716.
“Taxonomy, Race Science, and Mexican Maize,” Isis 112, no. 1 (2021): 1–21. [Open Access version.]
“Gene Banks, Seed Libraries, and Vegetable Sanctuaries: The Cultivation and Conservation of Heritage Vegetables in Britain, 1970–1985,” Culture, Agriculture, Food, and Environment 41, no. 2 (2019): 87–96.
“‘From Bean Collection to Seed Bank: Transformations in Heirloom Vegetable Conservation, 1970–1985,” BJHS Themes 4 (2019): 149–167.
“From Working Collections to the World Germplasm Project: Agricultural Modernization and Genetic Conservation at the Rockefeller Foundation,” History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 39, no. 5 (June 2017).
“Breeding Uniformity and Banking Diversity: The Genescapes of Industrial Agriculture, 1935–1970,” Global Environment 10, no. 1 (April 2017): 83–113. [Open Access version.]
“Atoms in Agriculture: A Study of Scientific Innovation between Technological Systems,” Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences 46 (2016): 119–153. [Open Access version.]
“From Garden Biotech to Garage Biotech: Amateur Experimental Biology in Historical Perspective,” British Journal for the History of Science 47 (2014): 539–565.
“Radiation and Restoration; or, How Best to Make a Blight-Resistant Chestnut Tree,” Environmental History 19 (2014): 217–238.
“Industrial Evolution: Mechanical and Biological Innovation at the General Electric Research Laboratory,” Technology and Culture 54 (2013): 746–781.
“Naturalizing the Exotic and Exoticising the Naturalized: Horticulture, Natural History and the Rosy Periwinkle,” Environment and History 18 (2012): 343–365.
Chapters
with Timothy Lorek, “Introduction: Past, Present, and Future Histories of CGIAR,” in Helen Anne Curry and Timothy Lorek, eds., Agricultural Science as International Development: Historical Perspectives on the CGIAR Era (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2024): 1–14.
with Sabina Leonelli, “Crop Descriptors and the Forging of ‘System-Wide’ Research in CGIAR,” in Helen Anne Curry and Timothy Lorek, eds., Agricultural Science as International Development: Historical Perspectives on the CGIAR Era (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2024): 234–258.
“A Short History of Seed Keeping,” in Jeannie Whayne, ed., The Oxford Handbook of Agricultural History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2024): 58–75.
“Data, Duplication, and Decentralisation: Gene Bank Management in the 1980s and 1990s,” in Sabina Leonelli and Hugh Williamson, eds., Towards Responsible Plant Data Linkage: Global Challenges for Food Security and Governance (Cham: Springer, 2022): 163–182.
“Wanted Weeds: Environmental History in the Whipple Museum,” in J. Nall and L. Taub, eds., The Whipple Museum of the History of Science (Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press, 2019): 223–236.
“Imperilled Crops and Endangered Flowers,” in H. A. Curry, N. Jardine, J. A. Secord, and E. C. Spary, eds., Worlds of Natural History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, November 2018): 460–475.
“Speeding Up Evolution: X-Rays and Plant Breeding in the United States, 1925–1935,” New Perspectives on the History of Life Sciences and Agriculture, edited by Denise Phillips and Sharon Kingsland (Dordrecht: Springer Verlag, 2015): 459–478.
Short articles and selected reviews
with Ryan Nehring, “The History of Crop Science and the Future of Food,” Plants, People, Planet 6, no. 5 (September 2024): 995–999.
“La diversidad de cultivos: repensar la narrativa de la extinción,” La Jornada del Campo, no. 195 (16 December): 6.
“Hybrid Seeds in History and Historiography,” Isis 113, no. 3 (2022): 610–617. [Open Access Version]
“The Race to Save the Food of the Future,” The Conversation, 25 January 2022.
“Going Beyond Seed Banks,” The Scientist, 17 January 2022.
“Profits, Prejudice, and Plant Patents,” review of Mara Hvistendahl, The Scientist and the Spy: A True Story of China, the FBI, and Industrial Espionage (Riverhead Books, 2020), Science 367, no. 6477 (31 Jan 2020), p. 517.
“Why Save a Seed,” Isis 110, no. 2 (June 2019): 337–340.
“How Gardeners are Reclaiming Agriculture from Industry, One Seed at a Time,” The Conversation, 18 December 2019.”
“Extension and Experiment: The Politics of Modern Agricultural Science,” essay review, Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, April 2017. [Open Access version]
“X-ray Lilies and Atomic Marigolds,” The Conversation, 24 May 2016.
“Tomato Seeds in Space: NASA Outreach and Science Education in the Shuttle Era,” Endeavour 34 (2010): 173–180.
Research collaborations
Colin K. Khoury, Stephen Brush, Denise E. Costich, Helen Anne Curry, Stef de Haan, Johannes M. M. Engels, Luigi Guarino, Sean Hoban, Kristin L. Mercer, Allison J. Miller, Gary P. Nabhan, Hugo R. Perales, Chris Richards, Chance Riggins, and Imke Thormann, “Crop Genetic Erosion: Understanding and Responding to Loss of Crop Diversity,” New Phytologist 233, no. 1 (January 2022): 84–118.