2 Postdoc. Fellowships "History of Science / History of Medicine" (Charite, Berlin)



Charité Berlin, Berlin-Dahlem, 01.04.2014-31.03.2016
Bewerbungsschluss: 31.01.2014

Applications are invited for two postdoctoral fellowships (TVöD E13) to be held for up to three years from 1 April 2014 or 1 October 2014 at the Institute for the History of Medicine, Charité Berlin, in the research project "Ways of Writing: How Physicians Know, 1550-1950" funded by the European Research Council. Successful applicants will work on the activity of physicians in one of the two following areas:

Natural history (possible areas of focus include practices of classification, botanical gardens and herbaria, comparative anatomy, trade and collecting, notetaking and republic of letters, materia medica, travel and colonial)

Accounting (possible areas of focus include practices of bookkeeping and reporting, statistics and medical topography, sickness funds and health insurance, population and welfare, public health and disease surveillance, economies of households, hospitals, and communities)

The project "How Physicians Know" explores the primary medium in which medical knowledge occurred over most of the last 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. The research group has collaborative links with early modern and modern historians and historians of science and technology at the Humboldt University Berlin (HU), the Free University Berlin (FU), and the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science.

Applicants should have a strong academic track record and research potential in history or history of science and/or medicine.  Teamwork ability, readiness for cooperative research, and openness to inquiry across historical periods and fields are essential. Project members communicate in English and German.  Preference will be given to equally qualified female applicants.

Further information on the research group:
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 research proposal (in English or German) by 31 January 2014 to:
Ms. Stefanie Voth, Sekretariat
electronically stefanie.voth@charite.de, or by post Institute for the History of Medicine Charité University Medicine Berlin Thielallee 71
14195 Berlin

Applicants will be interviewed in the week of 3 March 2014.

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Volker Hess

Institut für Geschichte der Medizin

030450529031