
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, and Associate Professor 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.

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)
Ability and Authority
Agriculture and the Making of Sciences (1100–1700)
Berlin Research 50 (BR 50)
Image Database: Visualization and Material Cultures of the Heavens
Local Gazetteers
Ownership of Knowledge: Beyond Intellectual Property
Source-Based Initiatives
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
Selected Publications
Schäfer, Dagmar, and Simona Valeriani (2021). “Technology Is Global: The Useful & Reliable Knowledge Debate”. ed. Dagmar Schäfer and Simona Valeriani. Technology and Culture 62 (2): 327–347. https://doi.org/10.1353/tech.2021.0061.
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Schäfer, Dagmar, and Simona Valeriani, eds. (2021). Technology Is Global: The Useful & Reliable Knowledge Debate. Special issue, Technology and Culture. 62 (2). Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
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Chen, Shih-Pei, Sean Wang, and Dagmar Schäfer (2021). “Digital Concordance: A New Publication Format for Scholarly-curated Datasets in the Humanities.” presented at the Workshop “Digital Publications in the Humanities,” Virtual.
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Schäfer, Dagmar (2021). “Useful Work: State Demands and Craftsmen’s Social Mobility in Fifteenth-Century China”. ed. Dagmar Schäfer and Simona Valeriani. Technology and Culture 62 (2): 373–400. https://doi.org/10.1353/tech.2021.0060.
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News & Press
Video Interviews
Books
Presentations, Talks, & Teaching Activities
11th International Conference of Digital Archives and Digital Humanities (DADH) virtual conference
Online lecture series
Freie Universität Berlin, Germany
Freie Universität Berlin, Germany
Nuremberg and online
MPIWG, Berlin, Germany
James-Simon-Galerie
Jesus College, University of Cambridge (online), UK
Volkshochschule Neuss
Freie Universität Berlin, Germany