Jessica Varner, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of the History of Landscape and the Environment at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research examines the intersections of the histories of synthetic chemistry, chemical landscapes, and design. She earned her Ph.D. in the History of Art and Architecture (HTC) from MIT in 2021, and is currently completing her forthcoming book, Chemical Desires: When the Chemical Industry Met Modern Design (1870–1970). The ACLS, Getty Research Institute, Fulbright Program, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Science History Institute, USC Society of Fellows, National Science Foundation, and the Graham Foundation have supported her work.
Trained as an architect, she works collaboratively with the Environmental Data & Governance Initiative (EDGI), where she co-founded A People’s EPA (APE). Together, she works to center justice in toxics policy to build alternatives and seek repair for the seemingly insoluble environmental problems today. Her current projects include an NSF-funded study on community-led environmental history and cumulative exposures, a co-edited volume on consent and refusal in environmental right-to-know futures, and a new book on neurotoxins, material culture, and extraction in the 18th and 19th centuries.
