Erin Alexa Freedman

Research Interests: History of biology; philosophy of science; history of technology & Industry; history of art, craft, and design; models & modeling practices; material culture; textiles.

Erin Alexa Freedman is a PhD candidate in the History of Science department. Her dissertation “Fabricating Modern Fibers: A Microhistory” narrates the scientific life of textile fibers as technical and cognitive resources in the mid-twentieth century Anglo-American life sciences through the life and career of one of its overlooked exponents, crystallographer William T. Astbury. The dissertation traces British efforts to revive wool’s cultural and economic status by introducing physical techniques to fiber analysis and manufacture, to the uptake and circulation of fibers among crystallographers, biochemists, and physiologists as model biomolecular forms for interpreting life’s essential properties. Setting this history in the mid-century context of intensive government and corporate investment in new materials, she investigates how fibers shot through the language and practices of researchers who envisioned biology at the molecular scale in primarily structural, rather than genetic, terms.

Prior to starting her PhD, Erin worked in museum curation at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum and the American Museum of Natural History in New York, and the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto. She has also curated exhibitions collectively and collaboratively at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt (Berlin), Goethe-Institut (New York), SESC Pompéia (São Paolo), among others.

From 2023-24, Erin was Visiting Predoctoral Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin. She is currently a Visiting Instructor in History at Mount Holyoke College.

Previous Degrees:

B.A., Literature & Critical Theory, University of Toronto
M.A., Decorative Arts, Design History and Material Culture, Bard Graduate Center