Tess Lanzarotta

Dr. Lanzarotta is a historian of medicine and Native North America and an Assistant Professor in the Department of History at Denison University.

She received her PhD from Yale University’s Program in the History of Science and Medicine in 2018. She also earned a BA in History and an MA in the History of Medicine from McGill University. Before coming to Denison, she was a Lecturer at Yale University, an SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto, and a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Science in Human Culture Program at Northwestern University.

Her current research explores the history of biomedical research and public health in postwar Alaska and traces the connections between settler colonial biomedicine and American imperialism overseas. Broadly speaking, her work brings the study of settler colonialism and indigeneity into dialogue with histories of science, medicine, empire, and economy. She maintains a particular interest in examining the ethical obligations, complex relationships, and forms of harm that are generated during research encounters—whether they be biomedical, anthropological, scientific, or historical. While primarily trained as a historian, her research and teaching engages with Indigenous studies, settler colonial studies, medical anthropology, and science and technology studies.

She’s from Nanaimo, British Columbia, and lives in Columbus, Ohio, with her cat, Phoebe.