Sara Tridenti is a fourth-year Ph.D. student in the History of Science Program at Princeton. Her research unearths part of the deep history contained in the ground beneath our feet by tracing the development and practice of soil microbiology in the United States. In her dissertation, Sara aims to weave together a history of soil science, microbial ecologies, and agricultural research by examining soil as a site of contention between experts, the state, and land users throughout the twentieth-century.

Sara graduated from Yale University in 2019 with a B.S. in Chemistry and the History of Science, Medicine, and Public Health. Her undergraduate thesis, which explored the ways in which chemistry emerged as an academic discipline in European universities during the seventeenth-century, received Yale’s Martin Klein and George Rosen Prize. Before coming to Princeton, she worked as an English language teaching assistant for Fulbright Austria. Sara can often be found wandering the mountain ranges in her home state of New Hampshire, where she also practices her hobby of landscape photography.