Thomas Anderson

Thomas Anderson is a Ph.D. student in the joint program in History of Science and Medicine (HSHM) and Early Modern Studies at Yale University who examines the history of poisons, the environment, and human experimentation in the Francophone Caribbean. He is primarily interested in how experiments with specific drugs and pharmaceuticals interacted with attmps to control the environment and with emerging theories of human difference in the eighteenth century. Thomas pays special attention to how colonial experiences with poisons and diseases informed scientific and medical activity.

He has previously written on the poisonous manchineel tree in Guadeloupe and the production of racially-inflected ecological knowledge, as well as on early modern scientific travel. Thomas received a Bachelor of Arts with honors in History and French and Francophone Studies from Hamilton College.

Research Areas: 

Poisons; Climatology and the Environment; Caribbean medical exchanges and conflicts; Enlightenment Atlantic; Experimentation; Ethnobotany; Material history & critical archival studies