Please join as the START research hub Collaborative Landscapes is inviting all START members to an online event with renowned expert in the history of industrial agriculture, Dr. Helen Anne Curry.

Helen is Melvin Kranzberg Professor of the History of Technology at the School of History and Sociology, Georgia Institute of Technology. She is an Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge, where she leads the multi-researcher project, “From Collection to Cultivation: Historical Perspectives on Crop Diversity and Food Security” with funding from the Wellcome Trust. Her current research centres on the histories of seeds, crop science, and industrial agriculture. She is author of Evolution Made to Order: Plant Breeding and Technological Innovation in Twentieth Century America (University of Chicago Press, 2016) and Endangered Maize: Industrial Agriculture and the Crisis of Extinction (University of California Press, 2022).

The event will consist of three parts:

• Prof. Helen Curry will present her research
• Dialogue between Prof. Helen Curry and interlocutor Senior Researcher Josh Evans (DTU, START), unpacking issues and themes
• Open question-time, fielded by Antoinette Fage-Butler (an academic coordinator of the START research hub, Collaborative Landscapes)

Please join the online event here: https://teams.microsoft.com/meet/36643622760193?p=qEdeK8elO6zjIxpEhK

Abstract 

History tells us that science and technology are implicated deeply in the sustainability and equity crises of contemporary agriculture. But how might history help us to entertain new possibilities? In this talk I draw on examples from the history of twentieth-century agricultural science and development to examine more closely (1) narratives of crisis themselves, to understand the work they do; (2) proposals for alternatives ways of doing science for agriculture, to see where those have led; and (3) moments where diverse pathways get shut down, in the hopes that this offers some insight into the actions we take in the future.