Isabel Gabel

Isabel Gabel is a historian of science, medicine, and political thought, currently serving as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Stevanovich Institute on the Formation of Knowledge and an Affiliate Member of the Department of History at the University of Chicago. Her research explores how modern life sciences have shaped political thought, particularly liberalism, and the evolution of complexity theory in governance. She holds a PhD from Columbia University.

Her work includes projects like Logics of Life in 20th-Century Liberalism, examining biology's role in poststructuralism, and At the Edges of Chaos, tracing complexity science's impact on neoliberal governance. She has published in journals such as History of the Human Sciences and Revue d’histoire des sciences.

Dr. Gabel has taught courses on science and governance, environmental humanities, and the history of biology at the University of Chicago and the University of Pennsylvania. She has also contributed to interdisciplinary education, co-teaching courses on gaming history and philosophies of life.