Biography

Lynn Botelho (b. 1963) grew up in the Pacific Northwest where she spent her summers working on salmon fishing boats off of the Oregon and Washington coasts. She has studied history at the University of Oregon, Oxford University, and holds her Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge (1996).  She has taught at the Universities of Essex, Cambridge, and Oxford.  She is a Distinguished University Professor at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, a Distinguished Professor for Research, and currently serves as the Director of Women’s and Gender Studies.  She is also a Life Fellow of Clare Hall, Cambridge.

Botelho’s publications include, including collaborative projects:  The History of Old Age, 8 vols, printed primary sources (2008, 2009); Age and the English Poor Law, 1500-1700 (2004); Power and Poverty:  Old Age in Pre-Industrial Society (2002); Women and Aging in Britain since 1500 (2000); John Winthrop’s Worlds:  England and New England, 1588-1649 (2006); and The Churchwardens’ Accounts of Cratfield during the 1640s and 1650s (1999).  She also co-guest edited a volume of Medicine and Society on ‘Anti-Aging Movements’ (2009).

Dr. Botelho has also co-organized a number of conferences, both internationally and nationally, for professional scholars as well as students.  These include:

International:  ‘Women’s Bodies; Women’s Work, 1600-1800,’ 27 February 2013; ‘Pain and Old Age:  Centuries of Suffering in Silence?’,  27 October 2012, Birkbeck University of London; ‘(Re)constructing the aging body:  Western medical cultures and gender 1600-2000’, 26-28 September 2008, University of Mainz; ‘The Worlds of John Winthrop: England and New England, 1588-1649’, 17-18 September 1999, Millersville University of Pennsylvania; ‘Old Age in Pre-Industrial Society’, early September 1999, Ithaca College Gerontology Institute.

National: North American Conference on British Studies, November, 2010, Baltimore, Maryland; North American Conference on British Studies, November 2004, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Lynn Botelho was also the founding Series Editor of ‘The Body, Gender, and Culture’, a monograph series for Pickering and Chatto Press.  She now sits on the editorial board of the journal Age, Culture, Humanities and HerStory.

Dr. Botelho has been a Fulbright-King’s College London Scholar and a Pain Project Fellowship at Birkbeck College, London.  She has been a Visiting Professor at King’s College London, Birkbeck College at the University of London, and the University of Essex, as well as the W. M. Keck Foundation and Mayers Fellow,  Huntington Library, a Visiting Student at the Wellcome Unit for the Social History of Medicine, Oxford.  She has received funding from the the Ruth Landes Memorial Fellow, the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Eduction, the Prince Consort Studentship, the Michael Postan Award, The Cambridge Historical Society, the Ellen McArthur Studentship, the Overseas Research Bursary, and the Cambridge Overseas Trust.

Lynn is also a competitive fencer and is currently on the US Veteran World Team.  In 2016, she won the Individual Bronze Medal in Foil at the World Championships and she was a member of the Gold Medal (2015), Silver Medal (2016), and Bronze Medal (2019) Women’s Foil Team.  She was the Veteran National Foil Champion in 2017, 2014, and2011, and has been the Silver medallist 3 times and the Bronze medallist 4 times.  Her Veteran team has been the National Champions twice, and the Silver Medallist three times.  Botelho has won 57 North American Cup Medals.