Ulrike Thoms

Ulrike Thoms has been a member of the Research Program in the History of the Max Planck Society (GMPG) since 2014, where she investigates the social history of the Max Planck Society (1948–2002) using a broad arsenal of research tools, from network research to content analysis and empirical social research. Her main interest is how the MPG constructed itself and mediated this picture both internally and externally. Ulrike has degrees in Social and Economic History, with her PhD (2000) focusing on "Rationalisierung der Anstaltskost. Die Ernährung in Krankenhäusern und Gefängnissen im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert.”

Prior to the GMPG Ulrike worked at the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität zu Münster on a project on the emergence and transformation of mass consumption 1989–1994. In 2001 she moved to the Berlin Institute for the History of Medicine, initially on a project on the history of the clinical trial and later on the history of nutrition research; she was also involved in projects on the history of the biosciences in Germany and the GDR and on the development of the pharma market. The common objective of these projects was the exploration of scientification and how scientists produce knowledge, communicate it to the public, and use it for their professional and personal goals.

Ulrike’s broad, interdisciplinary spectrum of interests ranges from consumer and physical history to the history of science and technology, the history of medicine, and social and public history.