Responsibilities
— Assistant Professor at the Department of History at the University of California, Santa Barbara
Contact
Profile
Elena Aronova is Assistant Professor at the Department of History at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She has been working on the history of environmental and evolutionary sciences in the twentieth century. In particular, she is interested in the ways in which scientific practices are affected by, and contribute to, social and political order.
From April to June 2014, Aronova was Visting Research Fellow of the Graduate School in Munich. She received her Ph.D. in History and Science Studies at the University of California at San Diego in 2012, after earning a doctorate in Biology and History of Science from the Russian Academy of Science. Between September 2012 and December 2015, she was a Research Scholar at the Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte in Berlin.
Aronova has published primarily on the history and politics of environmental data collection, the history of evolutionary biology, and historiography of science during the Cold War. Currently, she is writing a book on the history of attempts to integrate scientific knowledge and new technologies – from plant genetics to computers – into historical research.
The project, which she conducted during her stay at the Graduate School in Munich, has been called "Big Science in the Archive". It explores the history of "World Data Centers" in the U.S. and the Soviet Union.
Fellowship
- Visiting Research Fellow of the Graduate School in Munich, April – June 2014