Sarah Knott

Sarah C. Knott (born 1972) is an English historian of women, gender and maternity, and of America and the Atlantic world since the seventeenth century. She is the Hillary Rodham Clinton Professor of Women's History at the University of Oxford and a Professorial Fellow of St John's College.

Education Knott was educated at Colchester Royal Grammar School before completing her undergraduate studies at Magdalen College, Oxford, graduating in 1993. She moved to the University of Pennsylvania to earn her MA on a Thouron Scholarship, but returned to Oxford for her DPhil.

Career After earning her doctorate Knott worked as a research fellow on the Leverhulme Trust-funded project "Feminism and Enlightenment 1650-1850: A Comparative History" which was directed by Barbara Taylor and sponsored by both the University of East London and Royal Holloway, University of London. In 2005, Taylor and Knott published an edited collection based on their research, Women, Gender and Enlightenment, with Palgrave Macmillan.

Funding for the project ended in 2001, at which point Knott joined the faculty of Indiana University Bloomington as Assistant Professor of History. She was promoted to Associate Professor in 2008, and became the Sally M. Reahard Professor of History in 2020. During her time at the university she was a fellow of the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction and a visiting senior research fellow of the Rothermere American Institute at the University of Oxford. She also held a Mellon postdoctoral research fellowship at the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture. 2020 saw the publication of a supplement of the journal Past & Present titled Mothering's Many Labours, edited by Knott and Emma Griffin.

Knott has previously served as both associate and acting editor of the American Historical Review and has sat on the editorial board of Past & Present since 2013.

In August 2024, Knott returned to the University of Oxford as the second Hillary Rodham Clinton Professor of Women's History at St John's College, succeeding the inaugural holder of the chair, Brenda Elaine Stevenson.

Media work Knott has reviewed books on the history of motherhood for The Guardian, The Times Literary Supplement and BBC History Magazine. She has also discussed conceptions of motherhood in the past on BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour.