We would like to introduce our Fellow ELBOW research members – or FELBOWs – to our blog readers.

In the previous blog post, we got to knew our project leader, Associate Professor Soile Ylivuori a little better. But who is our postdoctoral researcher, Dr. Annika Raapke? Continue reading the interview and you will know!

Who are you?

Annika! Which, in this case, means: An early-modernist specializing in the history of the body, emotions, sensations, food, gender, race… I’ve also worked on a specific form of small trade, the pacotille, which, interestingly enough, connects all these aspects. I’m a Caribbeanist with a focus on the 18^th century French Antilles, but for ELBOW I’m broadening my horizon a bit.

How did you get interested in history in the first place?

I can’t remember NOT being interested in history. When I was very small, and my parents or grandparents would read me books that were written or set in the past (which was most of them), I would try to dress up like the children in these books and played that I lived in their time. I was very disappointed when I had to learn to write with a pen instead of a quill and inkwell.

What is your research topic in this project?

I am pursuing two parallel lines at the moment. For one, I’m very interested in 18^th-century European perceptions of electric fish and their powers, which were deeply colonial and were both a symptom of and contributed to the construction of “race”.

But I’m also going in a direction that’s rather different for me, by exploring experiments with medical electricity in early modern Sweden. The sources recording these experiments show both the patients’ and the researchers’ views on the human body in connection with electricity and I’m excited to study those in a wider European context.

What is the best part of being a historian / researcher?

The detective work, of course!! Historical sleuthing, aka research, is great. But the “exchange” side of it is also fantastic. Talking to colleagues, working on joint projects, bouncing ideas off each other. That’s just excellent.

What is the weirdest thing you have come up with in an archive?

I’ve come across quite a few weird things. My favourite so far: A tiny, anonymous letter from the Caribbean island of Martinique, probably written around 1777–1778. There’s no date, no greeting – nothing. The only thing the letter says is something in the spirit of it being a scandal if an honourable man let himself be hornswoggled – and then:

“Goodbye, you blasted bird’s arse”.

How would you describe ELBOW project in one sentence?

Our lovely team of researchers is around 24/7 to help you with all of your needs surrounding the history of electricity, including – but not limited to – the histories of the body, knowledge, its transmission, and scientific practice.