Elena works in the Spanish world from Middle Ages to the Enlightenment. She obtained her PhD at the Universidad Autònoma de Barcelona (2012); she has been a Postdoctoral Fellow in Department II and is now a Research Scholar in Department I. She currently works on three projects at the Institute: Convivencia: From Iberian to Global Dynamics; Domesticating Air; and Saving Babies: Women Paper Technologies for Knowing in the Madrid Foundling House (1790–1808). The latter is part of the Institute Working Group Working with Paper: Gendered Practices in the History of Knowledge.
Her dissertation Science for Women in the Spanish Enlightenment was awarded with the Premio Extraordinario de Doctorado of the Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona. In 2012, she was awarded a fellowship from the Chemical Heritage Foundation for three-months tenure at the Beckman Center for the History of Chemistry (Philadelphia).
Two manuscripts are currently in progress: "Keeping Memory: Paper Technologies for Knowing in the Madrid Foundling House (1795–1808)" and "Experimenting for the Public Good: Women and the Making of Useful Knowledge in Enlightened Spain (1787–1808)."
Projects
Domesticating Air—The Material History of Breathing Safely
Convivencia. Iberian to Global Dynamics (500–1750)
Counting Babies: The Madrid Foundling House as an Oeconomic House (1799–1820)
Reformist Objects: Gender, Knowledge, and Politics in Spain (1787–1808)
Useful Knowledge in a Global Perspective: Eighteenth-century Female “Improvers”
Selected Publications
Serrano, Elena (2017). “Spreading the Revolution: Guyton’s Fumigating Machine in Spain; Politics, Technology, and Material Culture (1796-1808).” In Compound Histories: Materials, Governance, and Production, 1760-1840, ed. L. L. Roberts and S. Werrett, 106–130. Leiden: Brill. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004325562_006.
Read More
Serrano, Elena (2014). “Making oeconomic people : the Spanisch ‘Magazine of agriculture and arts for Parish Rectors’ (1797-1808).” History and Technology 30 (3): 149–176. https://doi.org/10.1080/07341512.2014.988424.
Read More
Serrano, Elena (2013). “Chemistry in the city : the scientific role of female societies in late eighteenth-century Madrid.” Ambix 60 (2): 139–159. https://doi.org/10.1179/0002698013Z.00000000026.
Read More
Serrano, Elena (2012). “The Spectacle de la nature in eighteenth-century Spain: From French households to Spanish workshops.”
Read More
Events
Presentations, Talks, & Teaching Activities
"Female Networks: Gendered Ways of Producing Knowledge (1750–1830)," History Department at King's College London
Workshop "Health, Well-Being, and Subsistence in the History of Socioeconomic Rights, Duties and Obligations," Berlin Social Science Center (WZB)
7th Conference of the European Society for the History of Science (ESHS), Prague, Czech Republic
Workshop “Working with Paper: Gendered Practices in the History of Knowledge,” Max Planck Institute for the History of Science