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My background is in English literature, art, and I have a Ph.D. from U.C. Berkeley in cultural anthropology. At Berkeley, while training in the somewhat obscure field of ethnobotany (the study of how people interact with plants) I dreamed of going off to the rainforest to work with shamans or somebody wise. But with advice from a Beatles song -- 'The further you travel, the less you know' -- echoing in my head, I discarded that dream and decided to stay home to study the history of the social sciences themselves.
That project turned into a larger investigation. Years of research into out-of-date sociological texts and in-depth archival work at foundations and government outposts eventually became the book World as Laboratory: Experiments with Mice, Mazes and Men. Next year I will begin a two-year fellowship at Harvard's History of Science Department. I'm also at work on a new historical project.
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