history of science and technology, agricultural history, environmental history, global/transnational history, history of Latin America
Professor Garnett earned his doctorate in history from George Mason University where his research focused on the global spread of wheat seed technology during the Green Revolution in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. His research interests include the history of science and technology, commodity and food history, environmental history, and globalization.
Professor Garnett has leveraged his expertise in history to support the publication of a history of electricity that was awarded to J.P. Morgan’s NextList, contributed to expert witness testimony in billion dollar electricity cases, and worked as a data modeler and subject matter expert for various consulting firms focused on energy and economics. Professor Garnett has also worked on various public history projects at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences including data visualizations and the construction of a survey on the public’s perception of the humanities.
Oil into Wheat: Plant Pathology, Transnational Wheat Rust, and the Unfulfilled Green Revolution in Mexico (1842-1970). Under contract with University of Nebraska Press.
"Winds of Change Plant Pathology, Transnational Wheat Rust, and the Environmental Origins of the Green Revolution, 1904-1953," Agricultural History, Volume 97, Issue 2 (May 2023).
“A Global Green Revolution: Semidwarf Genes from Asia, Agrónomos, and the Environmental Laboratory of Mexico, 1953-1970,” The Korean Journal for the History of Science, Volume 44, Issue 2 (September 2022).
Review: “Pumpkin: The Curious History of an American Icon,” Journal of Social History, Volume 48, Issue 4 (Summer 2015).
Co-author: “Food Systems and the Environment (1950s-present),” in Ed Russell and Sally Fairfax, eds. The Guide to U.S. Environmental Policy (New York: CQ Press, 2014).
Ph.D. in History, George Mason University
M.A. in History, George Mason University
B.A. in History, College of William and Mary
Forthcoming “‘Plant Diseases are Shifty Enemies’: Hard Red Spring Wheat, Wheat Rust, and the Origins of the Green Revolution in the Long Nineteenth Century,” presented to Agricultural Pasts of the Climate Crisis, Agricultural History Society Annual Meeting, Knoxville, Tennessee, June 2023.
“From Korea to Mexico The Environmental Laboratory of Mexico and the Birth of the Green Revolution 1953-1970,” presented to the George Mason University Korea Seminar Series, Songdo, South Korea, November 23, 2021.
“‘Born Global’: The Mexican-Asian Origins of the Green Revolution, 1943-1970,” presented to the Sixth Biennial Conference of East Asian Environmental History, Tokyo, Japan, September 10, 2021.
“Global Seed Technology, Luxury Hard Red Spring Wheat, and the Environmental-Economic Problem of Wheat Rust (1842-1912),” presented to the George Mason University Korea Seminar Series, Songdo, South Korea, December 11, 2020.