John Carson

John Carson is Associate Professor of History at the University of Michigan.  He received his PhD in History (of Science) from Princeton University in 1994, and has held postdoctoral fellowships at the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, the Department of Science & Technology Studies at Cornell University, the National Humanities Center, the Wellesley College Newhouse Center for the Humanities, the Wissenschaftskolleg, and the MPIWG.  John’s current research project explores the development and deployment of the medico-legal category “unsoundness of mind” (non compos mentis) in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. His publications include The Measure of Merit: Talents, Intelligence, and Inequality in the French and American Republics, 1750–1940 (2007), winner of the 2010 Cheiron Book prize; “Mental Testing in the Early Twentieth Century: Internationalizing the Mental Testing Story,” History of Psychology 17 (2014); and “Differentiating a Republican Citizenry: Talents, Human Science, and Enlightenment Theories of Governance”(2002), winner of the 2003 Best Article Award of the Forum for the History of the Human Sciences.  John is currently on the editorial board of History of Psychology and was formerly on the board of Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences. He has also organized a digital history workshop series at the University of Michigan.