Dr. Valentina Mann
Areas of specialization: Intellectual History, History of Science, History of Anthropology, Modern European History
Areas of competence: History of Political Thought, Modern Italian History, Colonial and Imperial History
I am a historian of ideas with a particular interest in the emergence of social scientific knowledge in nineteenth-century Europe. I completed my doctoral research on ‘Theories of the mind and the disciplining of anthropology, c.1875-1914’ in 2021 at the University of Cambridge.
My current book project examines a series of mid-nineteenth-century debates regarding the limits of human knowledge and traces their lasting impact on scholars who helped institutionalize fields such as anthropology, psychology, and anthropology. Chapters cover Europe and North America and reconstruct two interrelated developments: scholars’ attempts to find a shared vocabulary for disagreement and critique that did not undermine their scientific standing, and how a sense of epistemic failure informed their increasing emphasis on ‘race’ and ‘culture’ (and attendant translations) as determinants of human worth and behaviour.
My next project will examine the discrepancy between theory and practice through a case study of the ‘sciences of crime’ in post-unification Italy.
Publications:
‘The return of Franz Boas?’, History of Intellectual Culture. An International Yearbook of Knowledge and Society, Volume IV (De Gruyter, 2025)
‘Mind and knowledge in the early thought of Franz Boas, 1887-1904’, History of the Human Sciences, 35.5 (2022), 157–184. ISSN Print: 0952-6951. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/09526951221091137
‘Introduction: approaching space in intellectual history’, with Daniel S. Allemann and Anton Jaeger, in Conceptions of Space in Intellectual History, ed. Allemann, Jaeger, Mann (Routledge, 2021)
Conceptions of Space in Intellectual History, ed. with Daniel S. Allemann and Anton Jaeger (Routledge, 2021) ISBN 13: 978-0-367-40549-6. https://www.routledge.com/Conceptions-of-Space-in-Intellectual-History/Allemann-Jager-Mann/p/book/9781032087306?srsltid=AfmBOoocoizSxYuLpXEJ2OQSExGcogZhXW_uzJWG5a8uPoZVvob6snd1
‘Histories of Anthropology: Transforming Knowledge and Power, Cambridge 2017: Conference Report’, with Freddy Foks and Viktor Stoll, History of Anthropology Newseltter, 43 (2019). ISSN: 2572-2220. https://histanthro.org/news/observations/histories-of-anthropology-transforming-knowledge-and-power-cambridge-2017-conference-report/
‘Introduction: approaching space in intellectual history’, with Daniel S. Allemann and Anton Jaeger, Global Intellectual History, 3.2 (2018), pp. 127-136. Print ISSN: 2380-1883. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23801883.2018.1450614
Conceptions of Space in Intellectual History, ed. with Daniel S. Allemann and Anton Jaeger, Special Issue of Global Intellectual History, 3.2 (2018). Print ISSN: 2380-1883. https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rgih20/3/2