Trevor Engel holds a Ph.D. in History from Vanderbilt University. He works on the intersections of the histories of medicine, science, Indigeneity, and disability. His dissertation, “Bodies Turned Objects: Transinstitutionalization, Disability, and Indigeneity in the Nineteenth Century,” examines how bodies traveled after death to, from, and between scientific and medical collections in the nineteenth century Unites States and Western Europe. By looking at the robust network of the trade and trafficking of human remains, this dissertation also investigates how specific bodies were stolen, displayed, and used for scientific knowledge production.
Dr. Engel is working on expanding his dissertation into a book project that analyzes the scientific knowledge making endeavors of professionals and how those definitions of bodies worked against the communities from which they came. In other words, how scientific and medical knowledge became political power over Indigenous peoples for the colonization project. He is also interested in issues of materiality and temporality regarding bodies that have been collected and kept within institutional collections.