On the Spot: Hannah Dawson
The historian on her love for Mary Wollstonecraft, Locke’s manuscripts and why you should wash your hands.
Why are you an intellectual historian?
I’ve always been drawn to theory, but theory that is grounded in life.
What’s the most important lesson history has taught you?
That privilege does not see itself as such.
Which book has had the greatest influence on you?
I remember reading Michel Foucault at university and that tingling, creeping awareness that so much of what I thought I knew was a construct of power – and might be resisted.
What book in your field should everyone read?
Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.
Which moment would you most like to go back to?
1640s London to hear the ideas at work in the revolution. And to every moment before a doctor delivered a baby, and ask him to wash his hands.
Which historian has had the greatest influence on you?
Quentin Skinner: scholar, mentor, feminist.
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