Rebecca J. H. Woods

Rebecca Woods received her PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2013. From 2013 to 2016 she was a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at the Columbia University Society of Fellows in the Humanities. Her first book, The Herds Shot Round the World: Native Breeds and the British Empire, 1800–1900, was published in 2017. She joins Dept. III’s The Body of Animals Working Group at the MPIWG, where she will begin work on a new project on the history of cold in the nineteenth century. Drawing on the histories of geology, paleontology, imperial expansion, and thermodynamics, this research will examine how, and why, understandings and experiences of cold underwent profound transformation at this time. She is currently an Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto’s Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology.