Anna Perlina

Predoctoral Research Fellow

Excellence Cluster 264 „Topoi“

Residence: September 1, 2008 - June 30, 2012

Profile

Current work:

Shaping a new field: Kurt Lewin and the Berlin Experimental Program in the Interwar Period

Anna Perlina’s dissertation project is dedicated to the history of experimental psychology in Germany from the establishment of the first laboratory (1879) to the Nazi Gleichschlatung (1930s). The work particularly focuses on the Psychological Institute of Berlin, where Gestalt--one of the most successful and influential psychological schools—was established in the Weimar period. The Gestalt psychologists Max Wertheimer, Wolfgang Köhler, Kurt Koffka and (then-belonging to the group) Kurt Lewin rejected atomism, and developed a holistic research agenda that integrated elements from diverse disciplines, such as philosophy, physiology, and physics. Against this background, a research challenge is to analyze Kurt Lewin’s experimental program on “Psychology of Action and Emotion”. The dissertation shows how Lewin used interdisciplinary conceptual bricks to create an original system of concepts for psychology; he then instrumentalized this as an analytical tool for research on mechanisms underlying human conduct. The work discusses how the experimental series conducted by Lewin’s group generated new knowledge.

The research project focuses on the emergence and establishment of applied social psychology in the North American, West European, and Soviet academic culture in the period between 1910 and 1970. The realization of the first socio-psychological investigations on individual-group and inter-group relationships not only induced the institutionalization of a new academic discipline, but also led to the introduction of new cooperation procedures between academic social science and society. Major aims of the project are, firstly, to delineate the varying local architectures of socio-psychological concepts and practices determined within the triangle of academic cultures, context-based geopolitical, economic and cultural conditions, and science-maker biographies. Secondly, the mutual interrelation between the international spread and the local transformation of knowledge and practices will be investigated.

Research interests:

·       Epistemic history of social science

·       Transformation of psychological concepts

·       Interrelations between science and society in the 19th and 20th century

·       Intellectual migration

·       Academic cultures and institutionalization of science

·       Transfer and transformation of knowledge systems