Lara Keuck
Research Group Leader (2021–2024)
Dr.
Lara Keuck is a professor of history and philosophy of medicine at Bielefeld University. At the MPIWG she led the independent Max Planck Research Group "Practices of Validation in the Biomedical Sciences" from 2021 to 2024. Lara graduated in molecular biomedicine at Bonn University with a Diploma thesis in virology at the Robert Koch Institute in 2008. She then participated in a German-French PhD program in History, Philosophy, and Ethics of Medicine at the University Medical Center Mainz and the Philosophy Department of the École normale supérieure in Paris, and completed her dissertation Towards an Epistemology of Medical Classification Systems in 2012. Her research was awarded the 2012 Prize for Philosophy in Psychiatry of the German Association of Psychiatry DGPPN.
In 2012–2015, Lara held postdoctoral positions at the MPIWG and at the Institute of Philosophy at Humboldt University Berlin, where she worked on a project on blurred boundaries, from which grew a book on vagueness in psychiatry. The ETH Zurich awarded her a Branco Weiss Fellowship in 2015, the funding from which was used to establish a junior research group Learning from Alzheimer’s Disease: A History of Biomedical Models of Mental Illness, which she led from 2015–2021 at the Department of History of HU Berlin. Lara has also been a short-term visiting scholar at Princeton University, University of Exeter, and Université de Bordeaux. In 2020 she was elected to Die Junge Akademie, the young academy of Leopoldina and the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities. Lara has lectured in medicine, philosophy, and history, and has collaborated with scientists and scholars across these fields, in particular on meta-methodological questions and on the uses of history and philosophy in biomedicine.
Projekte
Commoning Biomedicine: Networking Decentralized Collections of Oral Histories
Encounters between Medicine, Literature, Philosophy, and their Circulation in Public Debates
Epistemologies of Heritable Disease Classifications in the Early 1950s
Health Beyond Medicine
Identity in Histories of Science, Medicine, and Heritage
The History of Lucid Dreaming Research: An Interdisciplinary Oral History
Translating Validity in Psychiatric Research
Validation and Regulation in the Sciences of Health
Validation at the Borderline
Selected Publications
Demazeux, Steeves and Lara K. Keuck (2023). “Comment peut-on être précis les yeux fermés?” In Promesses et limites de la psychiatrie de précision: enjeux pratiques, épistémologiques et éthiques, ed. C. Gauld, S. Demazeux, and É. Giroux, 201–230. Paris: Hermann.
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Keuck, Lara K. and Kärin Nickelsen (2022). “Introduction: Embracing Ambivalence and Change.” Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte 45 (3): 291–300. https://doi.org/10.1002/bewi.202200044.
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Chen, Esther (2022). Politics of Sources Meets the Practices of the Librarian: An Interview with Esther Chen. Interview by Lara K. Keuck and Kärin Nickelsen. Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte 45 (3): 508–516. https://doi.org/10.1002/bewi.202200035.
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Hendriksen, Marieke, Christian Joas, Lara K. Keuck, Dominik Knaupp, Fabian Krämer, and Kärin Nickelsen, eds. (2022). Histories of Ethology: Methods, Sites, and Dynamics of an Unbound Discipline. Special issue, Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte 45 (1–2). Weinheim: Wiley-VCH. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/15222365/2022/45/1-2.
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Hendriksen, Marieke, Christian Joas, Lara K. Keuck, Dominik Knaupp, Fabian Krämer, and Kärin Nickelsen (2022). “Editorial.” Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte 45 (1–2): 7–9. https://doi.org/10.1002/bewi.202280105.
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Keuck, Lara K. and Kärin Nickelsen, eds. (2022). On Epistemic Times: Writing History 25 Years After Synthesizing Proteins in the Test Tube. Special issue, Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte 45 (3). Weinheim: Wiley-VCH. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/15222365/2022/45/3.
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Keuck, Lara K. (2022). “Locating Sources, Situating Psychiatry, Complicating Categories: A Journey through Three German Archives.” In Invisible Labour in Modern Science, ed. J. Bangham, X. Chacko, and J. Kaplan, 275–283. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
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Keuck, Lara K. and Katrin von Lehmann (2021). “‘Ich kann es nicht denken, sondern ich muss es tun.’ Entwicklung künstlerischer Praxis im Austausch mit der Wissenschaftsgeschichte. Ein Gespräch zwischen Lara Keuck und Katrin von Lehmann im März 2021.” In Katrin von Lehmann: Textura performativa 5, ed. R. Schrohe, 24–29. Berlin: Distanz Verlag.
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Keuck, Lara K. and Alfred Freeborn (2020). “The Limits of Biomarkers. Contemporary Re-Phrasings of Canguilhem.” In Vital Norms: Canguilhem’s “The Normal and the Pathological” in the Twenty-First Century, ed. P.-O. Méthot, 346–367. Paris: Hermann.
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Keuck, Lara K. (2020). “A Window to Act? Revisiting the Conceptual Foundations of Alzheimer’s Disease in Dementia Prevention.” In Preventing Old Age and Decline? Critical Observations on Aging and Dementia, ed. A. Leibing and S. Schicktanz, 19–39. New York: Berghahn Books.
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Features and Digital Resources
Past Events
Workshop
Health Beyond Medicine Workshop: Endings and After
MORESeminar
Global Health on the Move
MOREInstitute's Colloquium
Patient Activism in the Public Sphere
MORESeminar
In Search of Biomedical Validity: Towards a Cross-Disciplinary History of Validation Practices
MOREPresentation
In Search of Biomedical Validity: Towards a Cross-Disciplinary History of Validation Practices
MOREWorkshop
A Little Bit Different from Oral History? The Historiographic Realm of Research Interviews in History of Science and Medicine
MORETalk
The Fetus and the Lamb: The Many Histories of the Auckland Antenatal Steroid Clinical Trial
MORETalk
Latrines, Vaccines, and Socialist Doctors: Health in Mozambique’s Weekly Magazine "O Tempo"
MORETalk
A Cosmopolitan Parasite: Tracking Toxoplasma Between Laboratory Diagnostics and Regionalized Public Health Measures
MORETalk
Some Questions about the New DSM-5-TR Diagnosis of Prolonged Grief Disorder
MORESeminar
The Validity of Machine Learning Models for the Measurement of Personality Traits
MOREVortrag
In Search of Evidence: Shifting Epistemic Tools to Elucidate the Genetic Origins of Psychiatric Disorders, and some Underlying Assumptions
MOREColloquium
Local Struggles, Transnational Bonds: The Indian Women’s Health Movement and its Campaigns against High Dose EP-Drugs and Long-acting Contraceptives (1980-1995)
MORESeminar
Adaptation and Norming of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC) in Norway: 1970s to the Present
MOREColloquium
Between Transcultural Disease and International Diagnostic Concept: The International Pilot Study of Schizophrenia (1965-1973)
MORELecture
Being between Scylla and Charybdis: Designing Animal Studies in Neurosciences and Psychiatry—Too Ethical to Be Ethical?
MOREPresentations, Talks, & Teaching Activities
Symposium „ Ontologies, transits, displacements in 20th Century Sciences and Technologies“; Organiser: Ana Romero de Pablos, Chair: María J. Santesmases, 11th Conference of the ESHS, Sep 2024, Barcelona
History of Medicine Seminar Series, Cedars-Sinai, Los Angeles, California
Die unterschätzte Herausforderung: chronische Entzündungskrankheiten - Epistemologische, ethische und ökonomische Aspekte der Präzisionsmedizin, Tagung, ImmoPier Kiel, Kiel
Workshop: "Perspectives on biases and knowledge gaps in medicine", University of Oslo, Norway
Max Planck Institute for the History of Science
Interdisziplinäre Paneldiskussion ZAB - Forum Barrierefrei, Universität Bielefeld mit Christian Brandt, Tanja Sappok, Sabine Steinke, moderiert von Ninia LaGrande
Universität Bielefeld
Biomedical Visions: Aesthetics, Epistemology, and Medical Practice, Authors' Workshop, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin
Biennial Meeting of the International Society for the History, Philosophy, and Social Studies of Biology, University of Toronto Symposium, together with Simon Brausch, Sam Ducourant, Alfred Freeborn, Ariane Hanemaayer, Michele Luchetti, and Hanna Worliczek
Joint Conference of CIUHCT, CFCUL and I2SoS, Institute for Interdisciplinary Studies of Science (I2SoS), Lissabon-Bielefeld
Wissen und Wissenschaft: historische und systematische Perspektiven, Lecture Series, Universität Hamburg
International Workshop ‘Health and Disease as Practical Concepts', Erasmus MC, Rotterdam
International Workshop on Diagnosis in the Making, Copenhagen
Invited Lecture, Medical Museion, Copenhagen
Egenis Research Exchange
I²SoS-Colloquium, Universität Bielefeld
Universität Bielefeld
Validation and Regulation in the Sciences of Health, Workshop, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin
University of Oslo
Quelles philosophies pour la psychiatrie ? Colloque international, Centre Broca, Paris
Salon der Komischen Oper Berlin und der Schering Stiftung, zusammen mit Dr. Phillip Blum
Forschungskolloquium, Institut für Philosophie, Literatur-, Wissenschafts- und Technikgeschichte, Technische Universität Berlin
Symposium der Klasse IV – Geistes-, Sozial- und Verhaltenswissenschaften, Leopoldina Nationale Akademie der Wissenschaften, Halle (Saale)
Organisiert von Lara Keuck, Birgit Nemec, Johannes Schuckert und Hanna Worliczek. Naturhistorisches Museum Wien; Institut für Geschichte der Universität Wien.
Organisiert von Lara Keuck und Michael Bies. Clärchens Ballhaus (Spiegelsaal), Auguststraße 24, 10117 Berlin
Laboratoire d'Excellence DistAlz, Espace éthique Ile-de-France, Équipe de Recherche en Éthique et Épistémologie
Lehrstuhl für Wissenschaftsgeschichte, LMU München
CIRCUS, University of Uppsala, SWE
American Philosophical Association
Institut für Geschichtswissenschaften, HU Berlin