Dear faculty members and graduate students,
I’m very pleased to announce that Ms Margaret Schotte has accepted the Dean’s offer of a full-time appointment in Early Modern European History at the rank of Assistant Professor in the Department commencing July 1, 2014.
Ms Schotte obtained a BA at Harvard University in 1999. After working outside of academia, she earned a Master’s at the University of Toronto in the collaborative programme in Book History and Print Culture in 2007. She then entered the doctoral programme in History of Science at Princeton, earning an MA in History in 2009. She defended her dissertation in May.
Her dissertation, “A Calculated Course: Creating Transoceanic Navigators 1580-1800,” explores the technical underpinnings of European expansion and national naval power in the early modern period. It will be the first study not only of nautical training for mariners at a crucial moment of European movement around the world, but also the first exploration of the contributions made by mariners to this process of education and expansion. Schotte’s next project is similarly exciting, a study of globes in early modern Europe.
Ms Schotte has taught at Adelphi University and Princeton. She looks forward to teaching courses in history of science, book history, and comparative early modern history at York.