Joshua Tonkel

Program: GLOBES, History and Philosophy of Science

Track: History

Education: B.A. History and B.S. Biochemistry and Molceular Biology, Penn State

Year of Matriculation: 2019

Before coming to Notre Dame, I graduated from Penn State with degrees in History (BA) and in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (BS). My dissertation research aims to understand the place of agricultural scientific research and education in US land-grant colleges and universities in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Throughout this research, I have encountered sources in which numerous and varied voices try to articulate the role that agriculture and agricultural science should play in addressing the political, environmental, and social needs of the American people. My project tries to understand the influence and interaction of these numerous voices in shaping the development of agricultural science. Bringing together the fields of agricultural history, the history of higher education, and the history of American science, I hope to show how the unique institutional context of American land-grant schools shaped both the field of agricultural science and the place of the research university in the United States.