Han F. Vermeulen

Visiting Scholar

Dr.

Residence: October 1, 2011 - March 31, 2012

Profile

Anthropology and Ethnology in German-Russian Transregional Exchange during the 18th and 19th Centuries: Connections and Differences

As a guest of the MPI for the History of Science and an associate of the MPI for Social Anthropology at Halle (Saale) I work on a new project that analyses connections and differences between two separate but interrelated research fields. Anthropology was developed from the sixteenth century on as a holistic study of individual human beings and the human species as a whole. Ethnology and ethnography emerged during the eighteenth century as a descriptive and comparative study of peoples and nations (Völker). While physicians, philosophers and natural historians developed anthropology, historians, geographers, natural historians and linguists practiced ethnology and its sister discipline ethnography.  Thus, the roots of the social and human sciences lie much further back than is generally assumed. After completing a book on the genesis of ethnography and ethnology in the German Enlightenment, my current project focuses on how anthropology and ethnology were linked in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, especially in Russia and Germany.

For more information, see http://historyofanthropology.eu/han/index.html