Lissa Roberts is professor of long term development of science and technology at the University of Twente. She received her PhD in European cultural and intellectual history at U.C.L.A., where she wrote a dissertation entitled From Natural Theology to Naturalism: Diderot and the Perception of Rapports. Since that time, she has held positions at a number of universities in both the United States (including UCLA, University of California at Irvine, Washington University and San Diego State University) and the Netherlands. She now heads the STeP’s research program on ‘long term development of science and technology’.

Roberts’ current interests are oriented around four broad themes: 1] tracing the historical evolution and transgressions of the (claimed) divide between ‘science’ and ‘technology’; 2] investigating science and technology as co-evolutionary constituents of the broader context in which they develop; 3] integrating the history of science and technology as constituent elements of global history; 4] understanding entrepreneurialism and innovation in historical context. This can be seen in her current research and recent publications, which focus on topics including eighteenth-century chemistry, the early development and application of steam technology, ‘entrepreneurial engineers’ and the cultural history of science and technology in and around Tokugawa Japan.