
Dagmar Schäfer
Director (Since 2013)
Dr., Professor, TU Berlin, FU Berlin, Tianjin University
The current Managing Director of the Institute, Dagmar Schäfer is Director of Department III, Artifacts, Action, Knowledge. She is Honorary Professor in History of Technology at Technische Universität, Berlin; Adjunct Professor at the Institute of Sinology, Freie Universität, Berlin; and Guest Professor at Tianjin University (2018–2021). She received her doctorate and habilitation from the University of Würzburg and has worked and studied at Zhejiang University, Peking University, National Tsing Hua University, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Manchester, among others. She was previously a Guest Professor at the School of History and Culture of Science, Shanghai Jiao Tong University.
Dagmar Schäfer's interest is the history and sociology of technology of China, focusing on the paradigms configuring the discourse on technological development, past and present. She has published widely on the Premodern history of China (Song-Ming) and technology, materiality, the processes and structures that lead to varying knowledge systems, and the changing role of artifacts—texts, objects, and spaces—in the creation, diffusion, and use of scientific and technological knowledge. Her current research focus is the historical dynamics of concept formation, situations, and experiences of action through which actors have explored, handled and explained their physical, social, and individual worlds.

Photo: ausserhofer.de
Her monograph The Crafting of the 10,000 Things (University of Chicago Press, 2011) won the History of Science Society: Pfizer Award in 2012 and the Association for Asian Studies: Joseph Levenson Prize (Pre-1900) in 2013. Dagmar Schäfer was awarded the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize 2020—the most prestigious research award in Germany, it is given to “exceptional scientists and academics for their outstanding achievements in the field of research.”
Projects
Accounting for Uncertainty: Prediction and Planning in Asian History
Cultural Traditions of Technical Knowledge
Geographies of Knowing: China Historical GIS
History of Science ON CALL: Listening, Attending, Acting
History of Science Reader
Knowledge Transmission
Media and Methods of Practical Knowledge Transmission: Craftsmanship and the Qing Court
Monumentalized or Marginalized, Writings about Technology in Chinese History: A Database
News & Press
Video Interviews
Institute Events
Presentation
Digital, Domestic, Disposable: The Life Sciences’ Many Cultures of Experimentation
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Presentations, Talks, & Teaching Activities
ENIUGH Congress, Budapest, Hungary
Renmin University, Beijing, China
Columbia University, New York, USA
Princeton University, USA