Martina Schlünder

Postdoctoral Research Fellow

Ph.D.

Residence: November 1, 2011 - October 31, 2012

Profile

My research lies at the intersection of the History of Medicine and Science and Technology Studies, focusing on the history of ambulant forms of knowledge in clinical reasoning and the history of experience in clinical practices in the long twentieth century. My work also focuses on how different ways of knowing are socially reproduced, and how different forms of knowledge intersect and relate to each other. My current project on birthing machines builds upon my dissertation research on the experimentalization of clinical obstetrical knowledge at the turn of the 20th century. It is part of a broader project on the history of reproduction and reproductive medicine and sciences during the 20th century with a focus on the historical relationship between production and reproduction, in particular concepts of reproductive labor. In 2012 I co-organized an interdisciplinary conference around this research, “Bioeconomies of Reproduction: Historical and Anthropological Analyses of a Relational Structure, 1750-2010,” at the Center for Interdisciplinary Research, Bielefeld.

I am also interested in the emergence of biomedicine (or platform-medicine) in the period following World War II, especially on Ludwik Fleck ‘s concept of the ‘Denkverkehr’: the traffic of thinking and knowing in interspecies relationships on biomedical platforms. I recently co-edited a special issue of Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte on “Cakes and Candies: the History and Ontological Politics of Feeding Experimental Animals” which will be published in December 2012.

Another focus of my research is minor epistemologies, an analytical tool facilitating the study of mundane techniques in knowledge production and biomedical practices. In July 2012 I co-organized a conference on the impact of boxes, containers and wrapping techniques in the history of science. I am also interested in the emergence of new hybrid spaces in biomedical research which are often under-researched since they are ignored or understood as merely part of the research infrastructure, e.g., the stables housing experimental animals.

In 2002 I co-organized an exhibition on the life and work of Ludwik Fleck which was shown at the MPIWG and the Collegium Helveticum/ETH, Zurich in 2004. Fleck's work on comparative epistemology has been particularly influential for my research, providing a wealth of material and inspiration for my exploration of new research methodologies, processes of collective writing, and the development of tools for ambulant sciences and collaborations between art and science. I conduct such explorations as an active member of the Ludwik Fleck Kreis (www.ludwik-fleck-kreis.org).

I received my doctorate in the History of Medicine from the Charité, Universitätsmedizin-Berlin having earlier become an MD practising psychiatry and neurology. I have been a visiting fellow at the Department for Social Studies of Medicine at McGill University in Montréal and a research fellow at Justus Liebig University at Gießen funded by the German Research Council.