Current Research Areas: agriculture; science, magic, & speculation; phytopathology; therapeutics; migration; feudalism/capitalism; climate change; Italy/EU
Zachary is a historical ethnographer of agriculture and rural life in South Italy. At the broadest level, he researches how people narrate, navigate, and intervene in situations beyond their direct control. Zachary’s HASTS dissertation investigates how, amid crop epidemic and burgeoning desertification, visions for the future of agricultural production in Puglia are complicated by a limited understanding of inequalities that shaped the rural past.
His research has been supported by the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, the MIT Center for International Studies, and the Martin Family Society of Fellows for Sustainability, among others. Zachary is the 2025 recipient of the MIT STS Program’s Benjamin Siegel Teaching Prize, and in addition to his work at the Institute, is an affiliate of the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies at Harvard. He warmly welcomes correspondence at his e-mail or office addresses.
Website: sites.mit.edu/larock