Bryan McDonald

Bryan McDonald is an Associate Professor in the Department of History at Penn State, University Park, where he also serves as the Director of Interdisciplinary Programs in the College of the Liberal Arts. Dr. McDonald is a historian of modern America. His research and teaching focus on food, environment, resilience, and sustainability. He is currently working on a book project that explores the history of food as an environmental, health, and security issue in modern America. McDonald’s second book, Food Power: The Rise and Fall of the Postwar American Food System (Oxford University Press, 2017), explored how American leaders and policymakers deployed food to advance national security and interests in the first decades of the Cold War. His first book, Food Security (Polity Press, 2010), examined how globalization and global change have reshaped food systems, significantly impacting the national security of states and the human security of communities and individuals. McDonald is also the co-editor of two books that examine challenges to human security: Global Environmental Change and Human Security (MIT Press, 2009) and Landmines and Human Security: International Politics and War’s Hidden Legacy (SUNY Press, 2004). In addition, he has published more than 25 articles, book chapters, reviews, commentaries, and policy documents.

Selected Publications:

“Learning from Failure: Postwar Efforts to Establish a World Food Reserve.” Food Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal 8, no. 4 (2018): 1-15. (Recipient of International Award for Excellence for Volume 8 of Food Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal.)

Food Power: The Rise and Fall of the Postwar American Food System. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017.

“Food as a Key Resource for Security and Stability: Implications of Changes in the Global Food System 1950-2000.” Journal of Law and International Affairs 3, no. 2 (2015): 42-55.

“Ensuring Food Security: Meeting Challenges from Malnutrition, Food Safety and Global Environmental Change.” In Environmental Security: Approaches and Issues, edited by Rita Floyd and Richard Matthew, 234-247. London: Routledge, 2013.

Food Security. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2010.

Co-editor with Richard A. Matthew, Jon Barnett, and Karen L. O’Brien. Global Environmental Change and Human Security. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2009.

Co-editor with Richard A. Matthew and Kenneth R. Rutherford. Landmines and Human Security: International Politics and War’s Hidden Legacy. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2004; paperback, 2006.