Rosanna Dent

Rosanna Dent is Lipton Lecturer in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge. She is also a Visiting Assistant Professor of Research at NJIT, and was an assistant professor in the Federated Department of History from 2018-2024. She researches at the intersection of history of science and medicine, Latin American history, Native studies, and feminist science and technology studies. Broadly, she is interested in how human interactions unfold in the context of knowledge production, and the implications of these relationships for questions of political and social justice. She has published on twentieth-century histories of human genetics and epidemiology in Brazil and is currently working on two book manuscripts, a monograph on the history of human sciences research in A'uwe (Xavante, Indigenous) communities in Central Brazil and a collaborative compilation and analysis of oral histories of human genetics in Brazil.

In collaboration with colleagues and members of A'uwe communities in the Indigenous Territory of Pimentel Barbosa, Mato Grosso, Professor Dent is also working on a digital archive project to return historical documentation and publications produced since the 1950s to the Native communities they document.

Her work has been supported by the Institute for Advanced Studies (Princeton NJ), the Mellon Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Max Planck Center for the History of Science, the Social Science Research Council, and Fulbright IIE.

Ph.D.; University of Pennsylvania; History and Sociology of Science; 2017

M.A.; University of Pennsylvania; History and Sociology of Science ; 2012

B.A.; Brown University; Biology; 2006

2022 ACLS Fellow, American Council of Learned Societies

2021 Berks Article Prize (Women, Gender and Sexualities), Berkshire Conference of Women Historians

2021 Member of the School for Historical Studies, Institute for Advanced Study

2020 Burnham Early Career Award, Forum for the History of the Human Sciences, History of Science Society

History of Science, Medicine, and Technology; Science and Technology Studies; Modern Latin American Studies; Indigenous Studies; Digital Humanities

History of Science, Medicine, and Technology; Science and Technology Studies; Modern Latin American Studies; Indigenous Studies; Digital Humanities

Vimieiro Gomes, Ana Carolina, & Dent, Rosanna J. (2023). Viagens e circulação científica: Francisco Salzano e a genética das populações humanas no Brasil, 1950-1980, Ricardo Batista dos Santos, Paloma Porto and Gabriel Lopes (Eds.), Editora Huitec. Rio de Janeiro, RJ: Editora Huitec

Dent, Rosanna J. (2022). Relational Infrastructures: A’uwẽ-Xavante Strategies to Enrol and Manage Warazú Researchers, Jenny Bangham, Xan Chako, and Judith Kaplan (Eds.), Rowan and Littlefield. Rowan and Littlefield

Vimieiro, Ana Carolina Gomes, & Dent, Rosanna (2019). História transnacional das ciências, M.A. Linhales, D. Puchta, M.C. Rosa (Eds.), Editora Fino Traço. (pp. 33-56). Belo Horizonte, MG: Editora Fino Traço

Dent, Rosanna, & Santos, Ricardo Ventura (2019). "An Immense Mosaic": Race Mixing and the Creation of a Genetic Nation in 1960s Brazil, Warwick Anderson, Ricardo Roque, and Ricardo Ventura Santos (Eds.), Berghahn Books. (pp. 135-156). New York, NY: Berghahn Books

História Oral da Genética Humana
June 2023

Stolen Masks
Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences, February 2023

Dent, Rosanna J. (2022). Whose Home is the Field?. Isis, 113(1), 137-43.

Dent, Rosanna (2020). Subject 01: Exemplary Indigenous Masculinity in Cold War Genetics. The British Journal for the History of Science, 53(3), 311-332.

Dent, Rosanna, & Santos, Ricardo Ventura (2017). “An Unusual and Fast Disappearing Opportunity”: Infectious Disease, Indigenous Populations, and New Biomedical Knowledge in Amazonia, 1960–1970. Perspectives on Science, 25(5), 585-605.

Desconstruindo a história contada até pouco tempo atrás / To Deconstruct the History That Was Told Until Recently
History of Anthropology Newsletter, December 2018

Indigenous History and Anthropology in Brazil
History of Anthropology Newsletter, December 2018