Wythe Marschall, Senior Research Project Manager of Invest NYC SDG Initiative
Wythe Marschall is the senior research project manager in food and health for the Invest NYC SDG Initiative at the NYU Stern Center for Sustainable Business, where he works to improve the resilience of NYC’s food system, in part by encouraging growth of socially just urban farms. He is also a Ph.D. candidate anthropologist in the Department of the History of Science at Harvard University. Recently, he served as a research associate in controlled environment agriculture (CEA, or indoor farming) at Cornell University.Wythe's research has examined how corporations, activists, and publics imagine social and technical solutions to ecological crises, with a focus on 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.
Previously, Wythe wrote the popular YouTube show Crash Course: History of Science; co-founded the Biodesign Challenge; lectured in the English Department of Brooklyn College, CUNY; taught science fiction and the history of the life sciences at Harvard; curated art-and-science exhibitions in Brooklyn, and worked in health and wellness advertising. He holds a B.A. in literature from Bennington College and an M.F.A. in creative writing from Brooklyn College, CUNY.
Wythe can be reached at wm2251@stern.nyu.edu