Profile
Renée Raphael is an associate professor in the history department at the University of California, Irvine, where she specializes in the history of early modern science. Before coming to Irvine, she served as a post-doctoral research associate with the AHRC-funded project ‘Diagrams, Figures and the Transformation of Astronomy, 1450-1650” (Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge) and as an assistant professor in the History Department at the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa.
Professor Raphael completed her training in the history of science at Princeton University (Ph.D., 2009), where she also received a degree in mechanical engineering (M.Eng., 2009). Before enrolling in graduate school, she studied physics at Harvard University (AB, 2001) and traveled to Ecuador as a Michael Rockefeller Fellow, where she taught English in Machachi through the sponsorship of the Hacienda El Porvenir, volunteered with the environmental conservation organization Fundación Jatun Sacha, and worked as a programmer for Metamorf, an internet marketing service based in Quito.
Her research and teaching address science and religion, the history of mechanics and astronomy, science and visual culture, the history of the book and its readers, the history of universities, and the history of early modern mining. Her research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the Fulbright Program, Villa I Tatti, The Harvard Center for Italian Renaissance Studies, and the Huntington Library.
Current research
Professor Raphael’s current research focuses on mining knowledge and the practices that led to this knowledge being inscribed in texts. One strand of research is oriented towards archival and administrative practice, primarily in the Iberian world. A second subject of inquiry explores the limits of the metaphor of the early modern mine as a “trading zone.”
CV
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Contact information
post: History Department, 200 Murray Krieger Hall, UC Irvine, Irvine, CA 92697-3275
phone: 949-824-6521
email: renee.raphael@uci.edu