James Delbourgo

 ( British Historians ) 

James Delbourgo is a writer and historian. He is the James Westfall Thompson Distinguished Professor of History at Rutgers University.

Delbourgo was born in Britain to Italian parents and educated at Reigate Grammar School, where he studied literature, theatre and modern languages; and the University of East Anglia, Christ's College, Cambridge, the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia University, where he studied history. He previously taught at McGill University in Montreal, where he directed the program in History and Philosophy of Science; and was Visiting Professor of History of Science at Harvard in 2016.

His 2017 book Collecting the World explored the life and career of Hans Sloane, which culminated in the foundation of the British Museum in 1753. It is based on 15 years of research in Sloane's surviving London collections in collaboration with the British Museum, Natural History Museum and British Library. Published by Penguin in the UK and Belknap in the US, the book won four prizes, made four shortlists, and was named Book of the Week in the The Guardian, London The Times, Daily Mail and The Week Magazine, and one of Apollo Magazine's Books of the Year.

• A Noble Madness: The Dark Side of Collecting from Antiquity to Now (W.W. Norton, 2025).
• Collecting the World: Hans Sloane and the Origins of the British Museum (Penguin and Harvard, 2017): Leo Gershoy Award (AHA), Louis Gottschalk and Annibel Jenkins Prizes (ASECS), Hughes Prize (BSHS).
• The Brokered World: Go-Betweens and Global Intelligence, 1770-1820, co-editor with Simon Schaffer, Lissa Roberts and Kapil Raj (Science History Publications, 2009).
• Science and Empire in the Atlantic World, co-editor with Nicholas Dew (Routledge, 2007).
• A Most Amazing Scene of Wonders: Electricity and Enlightenment in Early America (Harvard, 2006): Thomas J Wilson Prize (HUP).