The Science History Institute is pleased to welcome our 2021–2022 class of fellows. Fellows come from institutions around the world and study a vast range of topics in the history and social studies of chemistry, chemical engineering, and the life sciences.
Fellows from the 2020–2021 class who deferred their award due to the COVID-19 pandemic are marked with an asterisk (*).
Science History Institute Research Fellow
Mary Ellen Bowden | Senior Research Fellow
Beckman Center Postdoctoral Fellows
Second Year
Isabelle Held (Victoria & Albert Museum/Royal College of Art, London) | Price-Doan Postdoctoral Fellow
Designing the Bombshell: Military-Industrial Materials R&D and the Shaping of Women’s Bodies in the US, 1939–1976
Megan Piorko (Consortium for History of Science, Technology, and Medicine) | Allington Postdoctoral Fellow
Library as Laboratory: 17th-Century Alchemical Texts
First Year
Meagan Allen (Indiana University) | Cain Postdoctoral Fellow
Roger Bacon’s Medical Alchemy: Occult Remedies and the Quest to Prolong Life
Peter Thompson (University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign) | Haas Postdoctoral Fellow
Grasping for the Mask: German Visions of Chemical Modernity, 1915–1938
Beckman Center Nine-Month Dissertation Fellow
Gustave Lester (Harvard University) | Haas Dissertation Fellow
Mineral Lands, Mineral Empire: Mapping the Raw Materials of U.S. Industrial Capitalism, 1780–1880
Beckman Center Artist in Residence
Anna Mlasowsky
Haas Short-Term Fellow and Artist in Residence
Beckman Center Postdoctoral Fellow in Residence
George Borg
National Science Foundation SBE Postdoctoral Research Fellow and Beckman Center Postdoctoral Fellow in Residence
Cain Conference Fellows
2021
Maria Rentetzi (Friedrich-Alexander University, Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany)
Diplomatic Studies of Science: The Interplay of Science, Technology, and International Affairs after the Second World War
2022
Alexandra Hui (Mississippi State University), Lissa Roberts (University of Twente, Netherlands), and Seth Rockman (Brown University)
Let’s Get to Work: Bringing Labor History and the History of Science Together
Beckman Center Distinguished and Senior Short-Term Fellows
Sarah Lowengard (The Cooper Union) | Mistry Distinguished Fellow
My Red Bandanas: The Waning Days and Afterlife of Turkey Red
Michael Berkowitz (University College London, UK) | Cain Senior Fellow
Polaroid, Kodak, Color, and the Off-Color
Frank James* (University College London, UK) | Cain Senior Fellow
Humphry Davy: Enlightenment Chemist, Poet, Social Climber
David Munns (John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNY) | Haas Senior Fellow
Not a Decree of Fate: A New History of Eugenics
Benjamin Schmidt (University of Washington) | Doan Senior Fellow
Alchemy at Meissen: On the Conversion of Matter, the Production of China, and Europe’s Transmutation of the World
Beckman Center Short-Term Fellows
Siobhan Angus (Yale University) | Haas Fellow
Camera Geologica: Materiality, Resource Extraction, and Photography
Martha Espinosa (Duke University) | Short-Term Fellow
The Cold Contraceptive War: Mexico’s “Demographic Explosion” and the Geopolitics of Reproduction
James J. Esposito III (The Ohio State University) | Haas Fellow
Between “Oxygen Sense” and Sensors: The Embodied Experience of Anoxia at Earth’s Extremes 1939–1955
Jacob Older Green (University of California, Los Angeles) | Cain Fellow
The Psychology of Mind-Altering Drugs: 1870–1938
Charnell Chasten Long (University of Wisconsin – Madison) | Short-Term Fellow
Fugitive Science Society: A Black Scientific Community’s Vision for Science Education
Fred Nadis (Independent Scholar) | Haas Fellow
Children, Science Education, and Play, from Tom Swift to Girl Coders
Stefania Moncunill (University of Barcelona, Spain) | Allington Fellow
The Vernacularisation of Alchemy in the Occitan-Catalan Area: The Alchemical Working Manuscripts (Pseudo-Lull, Pseudo-Arnau, John of Rupescissa and Others)
Kate Luce Mulry (California State University, Bakersfield) | Ullyot Scholar
“It Nourisheth the Child in the Womb:” Chocolate, Reproduction, and Colonization in 17th-Century Jamaica
Ying Jia Tan (Wesleyan University) | Short-Term Fellow
Plastic and the Economic Transformation of Chinese East Asia
Didi van Trijp (Leiden University, Netherlands) | Allington Fellow
Natural History Illuminated: Pigments, Paints, and the Practice of Heightening, 1680–1820
Jessica Varner (University of Southern California) | Haas Fellow
Chemical Desires
Daniel Joseph Walls (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute) | Haas Fellow
Confined Success of Soil Lead Cleanup Initiatives
Silvia Pérez Criado* (University of Valencia, Spain) | Haas Fellow
DDT During Franco’s regime in Spain (1940–1975): Chemical Industry, Agricultural Engineering, Public Health, and Occupational Hazards
Hiro Hirai* (Columbia University) | Short-Term Fellow
Pseudo-Paracelsus: Forgery and Early Modern Science and Medicine
Sarah Lang* (University of Graz, Austria) | Herdegen Fellow
Alchemical Encipherment and Practices of Secrecy: The Example of Michael Maier’s Viatorium (1618)
Raquel Reyes* (School of Oriental and African Studies, London, UK) | Doan Fellow
Chemical Magic Bullets: American Food Science in the Tropics, 1902–1945
Paul Sampson* (University of Scranton) | Haas Fellow
Ventilating the Empire: Environmental Machines in the British Atlantic World, 1700–1850
Antonella Sannino* (University of Naples, “L’Orientale,” Italy) | Short-Term Fellow
Forms of Artificial Life and Models of Transformation from the Middle Ages to the Early Modern Period
Joel Tannenbaum* (Community College of Philadelphia) | Mistry Fellow
Science, Marketing and Myth: Taste and Color Perception Research in the 1970s
Xiaona Wang* (University of Warwick) | Ullyot Scholar
Hidden Causes, Manifest Effects: Occult Traditions in the Forging of Newton’s Natural Philosophy