Julia Marino is a historian of the United States and the History of Science, with a particular focus on the intersections of science and economic policy in a global context. Her scholarship primarily focuses on partisan politics and policies surrounding technology, U.S.-East Asia relations, and trade. More recently, her research interests have expanded to include health policy and the politics of social welfare.

 Julia’s first book will explore how, in response to Japan’s economic and technological rise, American policymakers in the late 20th century embraced “competitiveness” as a central policy goal from the late 1970s to the early 1990s. The book particularly examines how the Democratic Party adopted competitiveness—government investment for national growth—as an alternative to Reagan-era free market economics. Her article, “Fighting the Cold War and the ‘Market War’ Through Critical Technologies, 1979-1992,” published in Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences in September 2022, investigates how, in the lead-up to the 1992 presidential election, both then-Governor Bill Clinton and then-Vice President George H.W. Bush championed the need for government investment in 23 “critical technologies.” Business lobbyists, with direct access to both Clinton and Bush, framed these technologies as vital to the nation’s competitiveness and future economic security as the Cold War came to a close.

 Julia’s second major project examines how the crusade against polio shaped the development of public and private healthcare systems in the United States between the 1920s and the 1950s. By analyzing the American philanthropic and policy response to polio, she explores how the experience of epidemic disease influenced national values and the U.S.’s distinctive social welfare state.

 Julia’s research has been supported by the Princeton History Department, the Princeton Center for Health & Wellbeing, the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs, the Consortium for the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine, and the Association of Centers for the Study of Congress.

 She graduated from Dartmouth College in 2017. She defended her dissertation at Princeton in January 2024, where she was awarded a Dean's Completion Fellowship and the Prize Fellowship in the Social Sciences. Julia is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Mershon Center for International Security Studies at The Ohio State University.