Born on 19 November 1965 in New Haven, Connecticut,[1] Winter spent her early childhood in Bonn, Germany, and attended high school in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where her father taught mathematics at the University of Michigan.
[3] Winter moved to the United Kingdom for graduate study, where she met Adrian Johns in 1987.
[5] She began teaching at the California Institute of Technology in 1994, and returned to Chicago as a faculty member in 2001.
[6] Winter's doctoral dissertation was published by the University of Chicago Press as the book Mesmerized: Powers of Mind in Victorian Britain in 1998.
"[15] Following its publication by the University of Chicago Press in 2012, Winter received the Gordon J. Laing Award in 2014.