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Dagmar Schäfer

Director (Since 2013)

Dr., Professor, TU Berlin, FU Berlin

Dagmar Schäfer is Director of Department III, Artifacts, Action, Knowledge. She is Honorary Professor in History of Technology at the Technische Universität Berlin, and at the Institute of Sinology, Freie Universität, Berlin. 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 Tianjin University and 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.

 

Schäfer portrait photo

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

Berlin Research 50 (BR 50)

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Ability and Authority

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Agriculture and the Making of Sciences (1100–1700)

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Berlin Research 50 (BR 50)

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Everyday Knowledge and Its Sources in the Sinosphere, 14th to 20th Centuries

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Image Database: Visualization and Material Cultures of the Heavens

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Source-Based Initiatives

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Visualization and Material Cultures of the Heavens in Eurasia and North Africa (4000 BCE–1700 CE)

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Accounting for Uncertainty: Prediction and Planning in Asian History

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Cultural Traditions of Technical Knowledge

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Geographies of Knowing: China Historical GIS

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History of Science ON CALL: Listening, Attending, Acting

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History of Science Reader

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Knowledge Transmission

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Local Gazetteers

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Media and Methods of Practical Knowledge Transmission: Craftsmanship and the Qing Court

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News & Press

International Max Planck Research School "Knowledge and Its Resources: Historical Reciprocities” launches

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Academic publisher Brill releases new open-access series Agriculture and the Making of Sciences

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Dagmar Schäfer interviewed for ZDFinfo documentary on education in China

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Video Interviews

Books

Presentations, Talks, & Teaching Activities

Teaching: Soziale Ordnung und Wissenskultur: Einführung in eine Wissensgeschichte China

Freie Universität Berlin, Fachbereich Geschichts- und Kulturwissenschaften

HISTORY AND CULTURAL STUDIES
Lecture: “Matters of Science: Sound and Silk in 17th-Century Ming China.”

Jesus College, University of Cambridge (online), UK

China Centre Seminar Series
Keynote address: “Wissensgesellschaft China: Fremdes und Eigenes und das lange Erbe des Pax Mongolica.”

Volkshochschule Neuss

Lecture series: “Herrschaft, Bildung und Experten. Zwei Ansätze aus dem klassischen China (10.–14. Jhd.).”

Freie Universität Berlin, Germany

Die vielen Anfänge von Demokratie
Lecture: "The Right to Own: Knowledge Management in 13th-century Yuan-China."

European University Institute, Italy. 

Department of History and Civilisation
"A Short Non-regional History of Astrophysics and China."

Max-Planck-Institut für Gravitationsphysik (Albert-Einstein-Institut), Potsdam

Colloquium
Leavings and Legacies. The Making of a Resource

Leibniz-WissenschaftsCampus "Resources in Transformation," Bergbau Museum, Bochum

Colloquium series
Lektüreseminar zu Kontinuität und Wandel in der chinesischen Armutsminderung

Freie Universität Berlin