Alison Winter

Alison Winter, PhD

Alison Winter is a historian specializing in the history of the human sciences. She received her PhD from the University of Cambridge, and was on the faculty at California Institute of Technology before moving to the University of Chicago.

Professor Winter’s first book, Mesmerized: Powers of Mind in Victorian Britain on the history of mesmerism examined how Victorians explored altered states of mind, and in the process, debated the character of scientific inquiry and the nature of interpersonal influence. Her second book, Memory: Fragments of a Modern History examined the history of sciences of autobiographical memory in the twentieth century. She traced the history of two opposing claims. One saw memory as a faithful recording (likened to motion picture film or tape) of personal experience; the other claimed memory was more dynamic, continually reconstructed by present experiences.

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