Wythe Marschall is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of the History of Science at Harvard University as well as the senior research project manager in food and health for the Invest NYC SDG Initiative at the NYU Stern Center for Sustainable Business. Recently, he served as a research associate in controlled environment agriculture (CEA, or indoor farming) at Cornell University.
Wythe researches future visions of farming, biological design, architecture and urban planning, and plant–human interactions. He analyzes how corporations, activists, and publics imagine social and technical solutions to ecological crises, with a focus on food and agriculture. His dissertation, Green-Collar Dreams: An Ethnographic Study of Vertical Farming Startups in New York City, 2016–2019, examines the rise of novel CEA startups and, in the process, unearths contradictions in entrepreneurial visions for a new, green phase of capitalism. He writes in conversation with science, technology, and society studies (STS), the anthropology of work, capitalism studies, and food and agrarian studies. Wythe’s research was supported by a generous Dissertation Fieldwork Grant from the Wenner-Gren Foundation.
Previously, Wythe wrote Crash Course: History of Science; taught science fiction and the history of the life sciences at Harvard; served as the Junior Fellowship Coordinator for Harvard's Science, Religion, and Culture program; co-founded the Biodesign Challenge; lectured in the English Department of Brooklyn College, CUNY; curated art-and-science exhibitions in Brooklyn; and worked in health and wellness advertising. His writing has appeared in McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern and elsewhere.
You can find Wythe frequently on Twitter at @hollowearths. Wythe can be reached at wm2251@stern.nyu.edu.