Marcia Norton

Marcy Norton is Associate Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania, with additional faculty affiliation at The George Washington University. Her research focuses on entangled cultural and ecological histories of early modern Europe and Native America, emphasizing human-animal relations, environmental transformations, and science/technology histories in the Atlantic World.

• Primary Affiliation: University of Pennsylvania, History Department
• Additional Affiliation: The George Washington University, History Department
• Research Focus: Indigenous-European knowledge entanglements, early modern natural history epistemologies, subaltern agency in Atlantic World technology histories

Key Research Themes: Her work investigates how indigenous knowledge systems transformed European scientific thought through case studies like quetzal birds in Mesoamerican-European natural history, pigs in Taino communities, and the transcultural evolution of chocolate/tobacco consumption. She actively contributes to debates about 'new materialism' and subaltern agency frameworks.

Scientific Contributions: Through publications on chocolate aesthetics, Columbian Exchange animal relationships, and indigenous technological practices in colonial Latin America, she has reshaped understanding of early modern epistemic shifts. Her forthcoming book The Tame and the Wild (2024) expands these themes.

• Best Book Prize, Association for the Study of Food and Society (2008)

Collaborative Networks: Active member of the MPIWG's "Out of Place, Out of Time" working group, integrating transnational research methodologies while maintaining faculty roles at two universities.