Meagan S. Allen

Meagan Allen is a historian of medieval science. Her research focuses on the intersection of alchemy and medicine, particularly in the writings of the Franciscan Roger Bacon (d. 1292). She completed her PhD at Indiana University in 2021; her dissertation “Roger Bacon’s Medical Alchemy: Medieval Pharmacology and the Prolongatio Vitae” examined how Bacon envisioned utilizing alchemical theories and practices to create a panacea that could extend human life by several hundred years.

Allen has held visiting fellowships at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin, Germany. She has published several articles on the history of alchemy, the most recent of which appears in The Philosophy and Science of Roger Bacon: Studies in Honour of Jeremiah Hackett (Routledge, 2021). Her first monograph, Roger Bacon and the Incorruptible Human, 1220–1292: Alchemy, Pharmacology, and the Desire to Prolong Life (Palgrave MacMillan), was released at the end of 2022.