Anna Winterbottom holds a Royal Society PhD studentship funded by the Wellcome Trust. With Jenni Thomas, she spent 2006-07 transcribing the Hooke Folio at the Royal Society, and is writing up her PhD research on the relationship between the connections between scholars and the East India Company in the period of 1660-1720. This project explores how non-Western knowledge contributed to the 'scientific revolution' in Europe as well as examining the connection between early science and the beginnings of colonialism.
Anna is affliated with Jawaharlal Nehru University for archival research in Delhi, Mumbai and Chennai. During 2008 she visited St Helena for archival work funded by a Central University of London Research Grant and described in the first issue of Lives and Letters.
Anna is currently working on a collaborative project with Samuli Kaislaniemi on the East India Company and linguistics. We are seeking submissions for a conference on the subject to be held at the British Library in June 2010.
Anna has an BA in Modern History from Oxford University and an MA from SOAS in African and Asian History. She has previously worked on archival and oral history in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania and for NGOs in the UK and East Africa.
Anna currently works as a Research Assistant at the Oxford e-Research Centre.
Publications:
Anna Winterbottom 'Producing and using the Historical Relation of Ceylon: Robert Knox, the East India Company and the Royal Society' The British Journal for the History of Science, Volume 42, Issue 04, December 2009, pp 515-538 doi:10.1017/S0007087409002209 (About doi), Published Online by Cambridge University Press 15 Apr 2009
Anna Winterbottom, Yonneke Koomen and Gemma Burford, 'Female Genital Cutting: Cultural Rights and Rites of Defiance in Northern Tanzania' African Studies Review, Volume 52, Number 1, April 2009

Projects