Interview with Professor Elly Truitt

Elly Truitt is an Associate Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania and a leading scholar of medieval science, technology, and cross-cultural knowledge exchange. She is best known for her influential book Medieval Robots: Mechanism, Magic, Nature, and Art, which traces the history of automata in the medieval world and explores the movement of technological knowledge across Islamic, Byzantine, and European cultures. Her research illuminates how medieval thinkers understood mechanics, enchantment, and natural philosophy, and how technological objects shaped cultural imagination. Truitt’s work is widely recognized for blending rigorous historical analysis with a deep interest in material culture and the global dimensions of medieval science.

In our interview, we primarily discussed medieval automata, such as how they were used, how they evolved, and what their applications were, as well as any techniques or technologies that may have been lost to time.