Call for Applications: Two doctoral positions (History of Medicine / History of Science, Berlin / QMUL)

Applications are invited for

2 doctoral positions (50-65% E13)

to be held for up to four years from 1 October 2013 at the Institute for the History of Medicine, Charité Berlin, for the research project “Ways of Writing: How Physicians Know, 1550-1950” funded by the European Research Council.  

Successful applicants will join the ERC research group to complete a seven-person team by focusing on one of the following areas:

1.	Physicians and the Baconian sciences in early modern Europe.  Of particular interest would be projects on writing practices of observation and evaluation at intersections of medical practice, state or local government, the household, natural history and Baconian sciences, “useful knowledge” and the practical arts, trade and materia medica, university or medical corporations, printing and the public sphere.  

2.	The data of health before the electronic age.  Of particular interest would be projects focused on the hospital in the 20th c. (bedside charts, punch cards, typing pools, lab reports, patient files) in relation to clinical research, disease classification, payment and insurance, resource allocation, medical statistics and large data collection, disease monitoring and prevention.  Experience in historical research on patient records preferred. 

Berlin offers an exceptionally resource-rich and stimulating academic and cultural environment for historical research.  Charité Berlin is the combined medical school of the Humboldt Universität (HU) and the Freie Universität (FU) Berlin.  The Institute and ERC research group have links with early modern and modern historians and historians of science and technology at those universities and at the Technische Universität (TU) and the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science.  Holders of the positions will have the option of taking the doctoral degree in history either from the Humboldt Universität Berlin or, subject to successful competition for fees funding, from the University of London as a student enrolled in the PhD Programme of the School of History at Queen Mary, University of London, which is linked to the ERC project through a collaboration agreement.  

The project explores the primary medium in which medical knowledge occurred over five centuries, namely, writing and its organisation and reorganisation on paper.  Physicians’ many roles meant that they used paper techniques shared across clinical, natural historical, experimental, pedagogical, forensic, military, accounting, administrative and other activity. To learn how paper technology works and how this has shaped knowledge over time, to show how human beings know and deal with the physical world through the world of paper: the project aims to contribute to this wider goal through its focus on medicine.

Applicants should have demonstrated research potential in history or history of science and/or medicine as well as specific knowledge and skills needed to work on one of the research areas listed above. Teamwork ability, readiness for cooperative research, and openness to multiple disciplinary approaches are essential. Project members communicate in English and German. 
Preference will be given to equally qualified female applicants.

Enquiries: Volker Hess [log in to unmask] or Andrew Mendelsohn [log in to unmask]

To apply, please send full CV, sample of written work, and two-page proposal (in English or German) for research in one of the areas listed above by 15 May 2013 to:

Prof. Volker Hess
electronically [log in to unmask], or by post
Institut für Geschichte der Medizin
Charité Universitätsmedizin Berlin
Ziegelstraße 10
10117 Berlin

Applicants will be interviewed in the week of 3 June 2013, with decisions announced the following week.