I am a historian of modern technology in Europe and the United States with special research interests in the history of science-related technology and the economic history of technology and science. My main current research project examines the interconnections between market power and scientific influence and control in chemical photography. I focus on the Eastman Kodak Company, the multinational enterprise that dominated the photographic industry for much of the twentieth century. By systematically exploring Kodak’s influence over photographic knowledge production and dissemination and by evaluating the consequences of the company’s central position in photographic knowledge networks, this project contributes to several areas of study including the history of industrial science and R&D, the history of scientific and medical photography, and research on the transnational and global circulation of scientific and technical knowledge. I have presented findings from this work in (among other publications) a recent article in Ambix and a forthcoming article in Isis and am preparing a book manuscript that is tentatively entitled “The Long Shadow of Kodak: Market Dominance and Scientific Control in Twentieth-Century Photography.”

My other individual or collaborative recent work has considered the histories of women and gender in science; intersections between technology, science, and capitalism; and global histories of chemical commodities, techniques, and industries. This final line of research I plan to develop into my next book project.

Much of my earlier work has dealt with opportunities and tensions generated by the real or perceived economic potential of technological and scientific knowledge, especially in the field of chemistry. My first book, Beyond Bakelite: Leo H. Baekeland (1863-1944) and the Business of Science and Invention (MIT Press, March 2020), adopts a transatlantic perspective, centered on issues of intellectual property and scientific entrepreneurship, to interpret the transformation of science-industry connections and interdependencies at the time of the second industrial revolution. It demonstrates how Bakelite inventor Leo Baekeland’s gradually acquired skill in crossing boundaries between scientific and economic spheres, with the aim of securing the highest possible level of intellectual property, contributed to his status as “father of plastics.” The expansion and transformation of the science-industry nexus, moreover, also affected the careers and legacies of many of Baekeland’s contemporaries.

Finally, the themes of science commercialization and scientific entrepreneurship are also central to two special journal issues that I co-edited, “Commercializing Science: Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Academic Scientists as Consultants, Patentees, and Entrepreneurs” (History and Technology, 2017) and “Academic Entrepreneurship and Institutional Change in Historical Perspective” (Management and Organizational History, 2017). Management and Organizational History published an interdisciplinary Forum dedicated to these issues in the fall of 2018.    

I hold an M.A. in history from the University of Leuven (2007) and a Ph.D. in history from Ghent University (2013). Before joining Johns Hopkins in the summer of 2015, I was a postdoctoral research fellow at the German Historical Institute-Washington (2013) and at Ghent University (2013-15). My work has also been supported by the Smithsonian Institution (National Museum of American History and Lemelson Center), the Science History Institute, the Hagley Museum and Library, the Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry, and the Consortium for the History of Science, Medicine, and Technology.

Books

Beyond Bakelite: Leo H. Baekeland (1863-1944) and the Business of Science and Invention (MIT Press, March 2020). https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/beyond-bakelite

The Long Shadow of Kodak: Market Dominance and Scientific Control in Twentieth-Century Photography (in preparation).

Edited journal issues

“‘I am not a Lady, I am a Scientist.” Chemistry, Women, and Gender in the Enlightenment and the Era of Professional Science,” Ambix 69, 3 (2022): 203-319 (with E. Serrano and A. Lykknes).

“Commercializing Science: Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Academic Scientists as Consultants, Patentees, and Entrepreneurs,” History and Technology 33, 1 (2017): 4-151 (with G. Galvez-Behar and A. Guagnini).

“Academic Entrepreneurship and Institutional Change in Historical Pespective,” Management & Organizational History 12, 3 (2017): 175-303 (with D. Wadhwani, G. Galvez-Behar and A. Guagnini).

Journal articles and chapters (selected)

“The Long Shadow of Kodak: Internationalizing Industrial R&D and Photographic Science,” Isis (forthcoming).

“Chemie,” in Wirtschaft und Wissenschaft: Naturwissenschaften und Medizin, edited by Heiner Fangerau and Michael C. Schneider, Berlin: De Gruyter Oldenbourg (forthcoming, 2024/2025).

“Laboratory Techniques,” in Global History of Techniques (19th-21th Centuries), edited by Guillaume Carnino, Liliane Hilaire-Pérez, and Jérôme Lamy, Turnhout: Brepols, 2024, 515-530. https://doi.org/10.1484/M.TECHNE-EB.5.129827

“‘Men Don’t Like to Work Under a Woman’: Female Chemists in the Photographic Manufacturing Industry, ca. 1918–1950,” Ambix 69.3 (2022): 291-319. https://doi.org/10.1080/00026980.2022.2097980

“The Scientist and the Advertisement: Reklamegutachten in Imperial Germany,” History of Science 58 (2020): 507-32. https://doi.org/10.1177/0073275320916971

“A Nucleus for a New Europe,” in World’s Fairs in the Era of the Cold War: Science, Technology, and the Culture of Progress, 11-27, Arthur Molella and Scott Knowles eds, 11-27, Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2019 (with S. Leslie).

“Introduction: Commercializing Science: Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Academic Scientists as Consultants, Patentees, and Entrepreneurs,” History and Technology 33, 1 (2017): 4-22 (with G. Galvez-Behar and A. Guagnini). https://doi.org/10.1080/07341512.2017.1342308

“Academic Entrepreneurship and Institutional Change in Historical Perspective,” Management & Organizational History 12, 3 (2017): 175-98 (with D. Wadhwani, G. Galvez-Behar and A. Guagnini). https://doi.org/10.1080/17449359.2017.1359903

“Commercializing Academic Knowledge and Reputation in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries: Photography and Beyond,” History and Technology 33, 1 (2017): 23-52. https://doi.org/10.1080/07341512.2017.1338553

“Corporate Secrecy and Intellectual Property in the Chemical Industry through a Transatlantic Lens, c.1860-1930,” Entreprises et histoire, 2016/1: 32-46.

“Plastics,” in Discoveries in Modern Science: Exploration, Invention, Technology, James Trefil ed., 867–70, Farmington Hills: MacMillan, 2015.

“Leo Baekeland’s Transatlantic Struggle for Bakelite: Patenting Inside and Outside of America,” Technology and Culture 53 (2012): 366-400. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/476809