Ischia 2017 Students

Ué!

I am a 3rd year Ph-Student at the Universität Regensburg (Germany). My project is about the early history of Agricultural Chemistry, 1760-1840. I investigate how farmland became a laboratory. Thereby, I examine how Agricultural Chemistry as a science was influenced by social needs and economic policy. My major interests are the practices of chemists who carried out soil and plant analyses, and consequently tried to improve agriculture. I am concerned with the "experiences" (practical knowledge) of these chemists, with their observations and experimentations, but also with their teaching activities and their dependance on patronage.
Since I am facing several "cycles of life" in my research, I hope the Ischia Summer School allows me to broaden my knowledge on that topic.

A ppriésto!
Christopher

Hello everyone, I'm pursuing a doctoral degree in the department for philosophy and history of ideas, university of Aarhus, Denmark. My project concerns the history of a Danish State Brain Bank consisting of 9.479 human brains collected between 1945-'82 from psychiatric patients who died in state hospitals. As such, my research object is beyond the "life-cycle" proper, but many other cyclical patterns figure prominently both in the archives and in the very public engagement with the collection throuhout its history. The collection was shut down in 1982, reopened in 2005, and just today(!) it was decided on a regional council meeting to close it down again - but with the possibility of its moving to another research centre. Afterlife and the return from the dead is another concern, as people discuss the fate of these human remains, and at least one zombie book is based on the collection.

In a different vein, I am preparing to co-edit a special volume of the danish journal for history of ideas about embryology and birth, so in that regard I am looking forward to some very enlightening days which will hopefully provide stimulating perspectives on these subjects, in which I am far from an expert.

See you soon!

Hi all,
My name is Anne-Sophie Reichert (I usually just go by Sophie) and I am a 3rd year PhD student in the Anthropology department at the University of Chicago. I specialize in anthropology of the body, the senses and the mind, where I am particularly interested in body techniques as physical and non-linguistic traditions. My dissertation work is mainly ethnographic in nature as I work with contemporary dancers, chorepgraphers and cognitive scientists on movement research, who, e.g. think of the body as an instrument for experimentation. However, in the past two years I have become interested in the (often shared) history of science and aesthetics of human body movement cultures in early 20th century Germany. Archival research led me to engage with the experimentalization of life at the turn of the century and to Germany's first Rhythm schools (directed by Wolf Dohrn, Anton Dohrn's son), to early forms of movement notation and to thinking body techniques as educational, explorative and expressive. For our summer school, I am interested in timing, choreography and rhythm of life and movement. I am also working on some arts-science collabs and would love to hear what historians of science think about the current trend of these. I look forward to think and swim with you!

Hello, all,

I am a fourth year student at MIT's History, Anthropology, and STS program. I am about to start fieldwork on my dissertation project, "Technologies of Perception: Searches for Life and Intelligence Elsewhere." I am looking forward to working with astronomers at MIT and U.C. Berkeley who are looking and listening for signs of life and intelligence beyond earth through radio astronomy and photometry. How can feminist epistemology help me analyze modes of perception (seeing/objectivity, listening /subjectivity) and the anthropocentric orientation of searching for the Other? The historical component of my work will examine how scientists have relied on cycles of life on earth as blueprints to design their experiments. I am excited to learn from all of you!

Hi everyone!

My name is Eira and I’m a Phd Research Fellow at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Oslo in Norway. My research focuses on 20th century history of assisted reproduction in Norway and the Nordic countries. A central theme in this thesis is that the development of assisted reproduction cannot be comprehensively understood without a consideration of the ways in which it was conditioned by the history of the life sciences. I’m also interested in how an historical account of human reproduction may benefit from concepts of time, temporality and (life)cycles.Thus, the topic and the reading for this year’s Ischia summer school could not be more fitting!

Very much looking forward to meeting you all tomorrow!

Eira

Hey all,
I am a first-year PhD candidate at the Humboldt University, Berlin, working on the history of twentieth-century psychiatry and neuroscience. I conduct my research as part of the junior research group "Learning from Alzheimer's Disease: A History of Biomedical Models of Mental Illness" [see link here: www.projekte.hu-berlin.de/en/alzheimers-disease/project ]; please take a look! My work focuses on the entangled role of imaging technologies in supporting the rise of biological psychiatry since the 1970s, assessing both the impact of imaging on experimental design, and on the communication of clinical realities outside of the laboratory. I completed both my BA (History) and MPhil (History and Philosophy of Science) at Cambridge University, and have a particular interest in how the history of science can address traditional problems in the philosophy of history. I also love a good Aperol Spritz. See you all soon.
Alfie Cheesman

Hello!

This is terribly (and embarrassingly) late but someone told me that I should still do this. By now, I know all of you already so this will be brief. My name is Jia-Hui Lee, and I am currently at MIT in the history, anthropology, and science, technology studies program. My research is about a group of rat trainers who rely on behavioral psychology to train rats to detect landmines and tuberculosis in Tanzania. I use ethnographic methods and draw on histories about ethology and behavioral research look at how multispecies sensing of threats work in the global South.Email me at jiahui@mit.edu if you would like to keep in touch.

It's been so much fun getting to know all of you. Looking to more circle/cycle debates and white wine with you!

JH

Hi all! Let's exchange contact info. You can reach me at mcgovern.mikey@gmail.com and I'm on the face book (Mikey McGovern, simply). Let me know if you make it within train distance from Princeton so I can come see you!