Mackenzie Cooley

Mackenzie Cooley studied History at Stanford University, obtaining her PhD in 2018 with a dissertation on animals in early modern history. She has been a Presidential Postdoctoral Fellow at Cornell University and will be an assistant professor of intellectual history at Hamilton College. One strand of Cooley’s work considers the history of ideas in Renaissance Italy and the Spanish Empire, especially the role that practice and experience played in informing theories about nature. Another strand of her research focuses on history with science, particularly the ways in which genetics and bioarchaeological evidence can provide new datasets for historians to transcend archival sources. At the MPIWG, Cooley has been working with the Body of Animals Working Group and the Proteins and Fibers Inquiry in Department III. Cooley is committed to revealing non-Europeans’ contributions to the history of science and is a founder of Natural Things|Ad Fontes Naturae, a global natural history project. She has been early modern editor at NOTCHES: (Re)marks on the History of Sexuality since 2017. Her research has been supported by the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR), Fulbright Foundation, Mellon Foundation, and Renaissance Society of America.