Doctoral Research

The Predoctoral Fellows of the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science undertake dissertation projects that form an integral part of the main research projects of the Institute. All Predoctoral Fellows at the MPIWG are affiliated with one of the Departments or Research Groups or with the International Max Planck Research School (IMPRS) of the Institute and undertake their research as part of the research activities of the respective unit. At the same time, and as part of the cross-departmental activities of the Institute, the Predoctoral Fellows of all Departments and Groups meet once a month for a joint seminar. During these meetings, one fellow usually presents their work according to the progress of their dissertation. The meetings are intended to be as informal as possible in order to provide an open and cooperative platform for exchange among the Predoctoral Fellows. The meetings also serve for exchange of information about life and work as a doctoral researcher in general and at the Institute in particular.

The central activities of the Predoctoral Fellows at the Institute are coordinated by the Academic Coordinator of the IMPRS, Sophie Schwarzmaier, together with the Predoctoral Representative of the Institute, Christopher Klauke. If you have any questions about life and work as a Predoctoral Fellow at the Institute, please feel free to contact them.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Group Foto of MPIWG Predoctoral Fellows

MPIWG Predoctoral Fellows 2022–23. Source: MPIWG, September 2022

Predoctoral Fellows

Predoctoral Fellow (1 Jun 2020-30 Nov 2023)

Internationalization or Centralized Control? Managing International Research Cooperation with Chinese Characteristics

astrelcova@mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de

Predoctoral Fellow (1 May 2022-30 Apr 2025)

Assessing Certainty without Certainty: On the Use of Technical Tools for Assessing the Methodological Quality of Biomedical Research Data and its Role in the Emergence of Scientific Dissent

Predoctoral Fellow (1 Nov 2018-15 Jul 2023)

Definition and division in medieval Latin commentaries on Aristotle’s Historia animalium and De partibus animalium

Predoctoral Fellow (1 Nov 2020-31 Oct 2023)

An Interplay between Chinese Traditional Healing and Modern Medicine from the 18th to Early 20th Century

rdu@mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de

Predoctoral Fellow (1 Sep 2022-28 Feb 2026)

“Usual Suspects” in “Unusual Locations”: Infrastructure, Maintenance, and Expertise in the Late Ottoman Empire (1855–1922)

zecempulas@mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de

Predoctoral Fellow (1 Sep 2022-28 Feb 2026)

Ignorance in the Age of Text: “Ignorant” Readers and Their Reading in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Britain

jhellstenius@mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de

Predoctoral Fellow (1 May 2021-30 Apr 2024)

Premodern Agricultural Knowledge in New Persian

rthowey@mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de

Predoctoral Fellow (1 Sep 2022-28 Feb 2026)

The Politics of Music Capturing. Music Information Retrieval and Ethnomusicological Research, 1900–1970

cklauke@mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de

Predoctoral Fellow (17 Aug 2020-16 Feb 2024)

Imaginaries of Artificial Intelligence: Framing Governance in Germany, China, and the US

ymao@mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de

Predoctoral Fellow (1 Sep 2022-28 Feb 2026)

Science before Nature: An Epistemology of Perspectives in the Commentaries of Cuneiform Scholarly Traditions

saquaijtaal@mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de

Predoctoral Fellow (1 Jan 2023-31 Dec 2025)

The Strange as Knowledge: Collections of the Anomalous and Marvellous within Late-Imperial Leishu (1600-1900)

nktsui@mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de

Predoctoral Fellow (9 Sep 2022-8 Mar 2026)

Colorful Encounters: Nature, Science, and Dyes between Europe and China, 1880–1950

lzeng@mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de

Visiting Predoctoral Fellows

Visiting Predoctoral Fellow (15 Jul 2022-14 Jul 2023)

“Heal Thyself": Citizens and the Construction of Knowledges of Care in Contemporary Iran

zabbasi@mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de

Visiting Predoctoral Fellow (15 Feb 2023-31 Dec 2023)

Erfassung der Psyche und Einhegung von Körperlichkeit: Die Geschichte apparativen, psychologischen Testens und das Verhältnis von Hand- und Kopfarbeit

Visiting Predoctoral Fellow (1 Oct 2022-30 Sep 2023)

Epistemic Everyday Life: A Feminist Analysis of Germany’s Early Modern Printing Business

Visiting Predoctoral Fellow (1 Dec 2022-31 Aug 2024)

Standardization in Post-War Life Sciences

Visiting Predoctoral Fellow (1 Jul 2020-30 Sep 2025)

The Geopolitics of Chinese Arctic Research

taeiterjord@mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de

Visiting Predoctoral Fellow (22 Aug 2022-31 Oct 2022)

Towards a Transcendental Geology

Visiting Predoctoral Fellow (1 Apr 2023-31 Jul 2023)

Fabricating Modern Fibers: Metaphors, Models, and Artifacts in Molecular Biology, 1920-1958

efreedman@mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de

Visiting Predoctoral Fellow (16 Jan 2023-31 Dec 2023)

Doctoral candidate at Ruprecht-Karls University Heidelberg Research Fellow at Ca' Foscari Università Venezia in the ERC-project Early Modern Cosmology Editorial Manager for Verum Factum: Studies and Sources on Political Epistemology (EOA book series).

The Unity of Science in the Anthropocene

sfreyberg@mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de

Visiting Predoctoral Fellow (1 Apr 2022-31 Jan 2024)

The Classical Age of Quantum Gravity: from Dirac to Wheeler

sfurlan@mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de

Visiting Predoctoral Fellow (3 Oct 2022-2 Dec 2022)

The Importance of Historical Epistemology for the Philosophy of Science. The Ether as a Resilient Epistemic Object

Visiting Predoctoral Fellow (15 Jul 2020-30 Sep 2025)

Forging ahead under a Changing Sky: Meteorological Services and Crop Seed Breeding as Climate Change Adaptation in China

jgrossebley@mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de

Visiting Predoctoral Fellow (15 Nov 2020-30 Jun 2023)

Scientific Journals and the Transparency of Research: From 20th Century to Open Science

mmhan@mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de

Visiting Predoctoral Fellow (1 May 2023-31 Oct 2023)

Scientific Controversies as a Window to Modeling Processes in the Life

Visiting Predoctoral Fellow (20 Sep 2022-20 Nov 2022)

Travelling the Graphic Tactility: Pulse Illustrations in Seventeenth-Century Medical Exchange between China and Europe

Visiting Predoctoral Fellow (25 Dec 2022-31 Jul 2024)

Open Science in University-Industry Research Collaboration in the EU and China

aslattu@mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de

Visiting Predoctoral Fellow (27 Jan 2023-29 Feb 2024)

CorDeep and the Sacrobosco Dataset: Detection of Visual Elements in Historical Documents

Visiting Predoctoral Fellow (1 Jun 2022-15 Nov 2022)

A Critical Theory of Political Autonomy

Visiting Predoctoral Fellow (1 Oct 2022-30 Nov 2022)

Fundamental Physics and Empiricism. The Plausibility of Contemporary Theories with No Empirical Confirmation

Visiting Predoctoral Fellow (1 Jul 2019-31 Dec 2023)

Text and Context in Early Islamic Scholarship: A Ninth-Century Paraphrase of Ptolemaic Astronomy in Al-Farghānī’s Elements of Astronomy

rmousavi@mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de

Visiting Predoctoral Fellow (1 Dec 2022-30 Nov 2023)

Philip Anderson Against the Big Machines: And How Emergence Made its Way into Physics

ngargante@mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de

Visiting Predoctoral Fellow (1 Nov 2018-31 Dec 2022)

Die Max-Planck-Gesellschaft als wissenschaftspolitischer Akteur in der Allianz der Wissenschaftsorganisationen

vosganian@mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de

Visiting Predoctoral Fellow (15 Feb 2023-30 Apr 2023)

At the Source of the Cimento: Meteorological and Intellectual Networks in Tuscany in the 1650s

Visiting Predoctoral Fellow (15 May 2022-14 Nov 2022)

Congenital Anomalies in Medieval French Romance and Medicine

Visiting Predoctoral Fellow (31 Oct 2022-5 Feb 2023)

How do Future Worldviews Emerge? Quantum Physics, and the Case of Werner Heisenberg’s ‘Religion without God’

Visiting Predoctoral Fellow (1 Feb 2021-31 Dec 2023)

Die Erwirtschaftung des Anthropozäns? Die Rolle des modernen Wirtschaftens in den Entwicklungsdynamiken zur Entstehung des Anthropozäns: Ursprünge und neue Wege

gschaefer@mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de

Visiting Predoctoral Fellow (17 Oct 2022-31 Oct 2023)

NFDI4Objects: Research Data Infrastructure for the Material Remains of Human History

Visiting Predoctoral Fellow (1 Sep 2021-31 Jul 2025)

The Evolution of Visual Language in Early Modern Cosmology

Visiting Predoctoral Fellow (1 Feb 2021-30 Sep 2023)

The Analysis, Interpretation, and Mediation of History Using Digital Research Methods and Tools. An Investigation into their History-Producing Mechanisms

asiebold@mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de

Visiting Predoctoral Fellow (1 Feb 2021-31 May 2023)

PhD

Carbon Cosmotechnics

kasobecka@mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de

Visiting Predoctoral Fellow (1 Feb 2021-31 Dec 2023)

A “Fair Trade” of Knowledge? Ipecacuanha as an Example of Practices of Knowledge Exchange Between South America and Europe, 16th-19th Centuries

sspielmann@mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de

Visiting Predoctoral Fellow (1 Mar 2020-31 Oct 2023)

The Coimbra Commentaries' Doctrine of Sense Perception

ytao@mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de

Visiting Predoctoral Fellow (1 Jul 2023-31 Dec 2023)

Number Governance: The Institutionalization of Journal Metrics and Rankings in the Chinese Research Assessment Framework

jwang@mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de

Visiting Predoctoral Fellow (1 Apr 2023-31 Jul 2023)

Walnut Tree in Spring Rain

Visiting Predoctoral Fellow (1 May 2023-31 Oct 2023)

PACIFIC CROSSINGS: The China Foundation and a Negotiated Translation of American Science to China, 1913-1949

cxing@mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de