2 PhD positions Berlin / QMUL "How Physicians Know"
Call for Applications: Two doctoral positions (History of
Medicine / History of Science, Berlin / QMUL)
Applications are invited for
2 doctoral positions (50-65% E13)
to be held for up to four years from 1 October 2013 at
the Institute for the History of Medicine, Charité Berlin, for the research
project “Ways of Writing: How Physicians Know, 1550-1950” funded by the
European Research Council.
Successful applicants will join the ERC research group to
complete a seven-person team by focusing on one of the following areas:
1. Physicians
and the Baconian sciences in early modern Europe. Of particular interest would be projects on
writing practices of observation and evaluation at intersections of medical
practice, state or local government, the household, natural history and
Baconian sciences, “useful knowledge” and the practical arts, trade and materia
medica, university or medical corporations, printing and the public
sphere.
2. The data of
health before the electronic age. Of
particular interest would be projects focused on the hospital in the 20th c.
(bedside charts, punch cards, typing pools, lab reports, patient files) in
relation to clinical research, disease classification, payment and insurance,
resource allocation, medical statistics and large data collection, disease
monitoring and prevention. Experience in
historical research on patient records preferred.
Berlin offers an exceptionally resource-rich and
stimulating academic and cultural environment for historical research. Charité Berlin is the combined medical school
of the Humboldt Universität (HU) and the Freie Universität (FU) Berlin. The Institute and ERC research group have
links with early modern and modern historians and historians of science and
technology at those universities and at the Technische Universität (TU) and the
Max Planck Institute for the History of Science. Holders of the positions will have the option
of taking the doctoral degree in history either from the Humboldt Universität
Berlin or, subject to successful competition for fees funding, from the
University of London as a student enrolled in the PhD Programme of the School
of History at Queen Mary, University of London, which is linked to the ERC
project through a collaboration agreement.
The project explores the primary medium in which medical
knowledge occurred over five centuries, namely, writing and its organisation
and reorganisation on paper. Physicians’
many roles meant that they used paper techniques shared across clinical,
natural historical, experimental, pedagogical, forensic, military, accounting,
administrative and other activity. To learn how paper technology works and how
this has shaped knowledge over time, to show how human beings know and deal
with the physical world through the world of paper: the project aims to
contribute to this wider goal through its focus on medicine.
Applicants should have demonstrated research potential in
history or history of science and/or medicine as well as specific knowledge and
skills needed to work on one of the research areas listed above. Teamwork
ability, readiness for cooperative research, and openness to multiple
disciplinary approaches are essential. Project members communicate in English
and German.
Preference will be given to equally qualified female
applicants.
Enquiries: Volker Hess volker.hess@charite.de or Andrew
Mendelsohn a.mendelsohn@qmul.ac.uk
To apply, please send full CV, sample of written work,
and two-page proposal (in English or German) for research in one of the areas
listed above by 15 May 2013 to:
Prof. Volker Hess
electronically volker.hess@charite.de,
or by post Institut für Geschichte der Medizin Charité Universitätsmedizin
Berlin Ziegelstraße 10
10117 Berlin
Applicants will be interviewed in the week of 3 June
2013, with decisions announced the following week.