In 2013, Roos began work at the University of Lincoln and retired in July 2024 and is now an Emeritus Professor. She became the Editor-in-Chief of Notes and Records in 2018.[2] Under her editorship, the first in a series of video interviews was published and the number of entries to the Essay prize significantly increased.[3]
Roos was elected Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries in 2013.[4] She is also a fellow of the Linnean Society of London.
Research
Roos' work concerns early modern English science and the early history of the Royal Society. She studied the naturalist Martin Lister and his daughters Anna and Susanna, who created the images for the book Historiae Conchyliorum and were some of the first women to use a microscope.[5][6] Roos detailed how Anna and Susanna became artists from their teenage years and that their work was used by their father because he considered that even the best professional illustrators were not sufficiently reliable.[7] Her book, Martin Lister and his Remarkable Daughters, was published by the Bodleian Library in 2018.[8] The book was published in Pinyin in 2024.[9]
Roos' book Goldfish, one of Reaktion Books' Animal series, was published in September 2019.[10] The book was dedicated to a pet goldfish she owned as a child, named Speedy.
In 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Roos was interviewed by National Geographic on the effect of pandemics on ancient cities. She discussed plague outbreaks and quarantine in Venice in the early modern era.[11]
Her other books are:
Edited with Gideon Manning, Collecting Wisdom of the Early Modern Scholar: Essays in Honor of Mordechai Feingold. Springer, 2023.
Edited with Vera Keller, Collective Wisdom: Collecting in the Early Modern Academy. Brepols, 2022.
Martin Folkes (1690-1754): Newtonian, Antiquary, Connoisseur. Oxford University Press, 2021 [12]
Edited with Vera Keller and Elizabeth Yale, Archival afterlives: life, death, and knowledge-making in early modern British scientific and medical archives. Brill, 2018.
The correspondence of Dr Martin Lister (1639-1712) [Volume one 1662-1677]. Brill, 2015. Winner of the John Thackray Medal, Society of the History of Natural History.
Web of Nature: Martin Lister (1639-1712), the first arachnologist. Brill, 2011.
The salt of the earth: natural philosophy, medicine and chymistry in England, 1650-1750. Brill, 2007.
Luminaries in the natural world: the sun and moon in England, 1400-1720. Peter Lang, 2001.