SCIENTIFIC PERSONAE IN CULTURAL ENCOUNTERS
Research Team
Prof. dr. Kirsti Niskanen
Kirsti Niskanen is Professor at the Department of History at Stockholm University and Associate Professor of Gender Studies. Her current work is focused on scientific persona and gender at Stockholm University between the 1920s and 1950s, when American philanthropy (the Rockefeller Foundation) contributed to the creation of new disciplines and research areas at Swedish universities.
She has done research on different areas of social and economic history, biographical gender research and Nordic gender equality politics. Subsequently she has developed her interests in the direction of the history of science and university history.
Prof. dr. Mineke Bosch
Mineke Bosch is a professor of Modern History. She is a specialist in the history of science and gender, and the history of international women's organisations with a special focus on (auto)biography. Recent studies focus on the concept of persona in scientific biography.
Prof. dr. Kaat Wils
Kaat Wils is professor of Modern European Cultural History and head of the Research Unit Cultural History since 1750 at the University of Leuven. Her research concerns the modern history of the humanities and the biomedical sciences. Selected publications related to the SPICE-project are: ‘The Revelation of a Modern Saint: Marie Curie's Scientific Asceticism and the Culture of Professionalised Science’, in E. Peeters ,L. Van Molle and K. Wils (eds.), Beyond pleasure: cultures of modern asceticism, New York: Berghahn, 2011 and, with Joris Vandendriessche and Evert Peeters (eds.) Scientists’ Expertise as Performance: between State and Society, 1860-1960 (Pickering & Chatto, March 2015).
Dr. Pieter Huistra
Pieter Huistra has been a member of the research group Cultural History since 1750 from 2008 onwards, first as a PhD Fellow of the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO) and currently as a postdoctoral researcher. In 2013 he defended his doctoral dissertation Bouwmeesters,zedenmeesters. Geschiedbeoefening in Nederland tussen 1830 en 1870 (Architects, moralists. Historiography in the Netherlands between 1830 and 1870) and obtained his PhD degree.
His research concerns not only the history of the humanities, but also that of the social and biomedical sciences. He is working on two research projects in the history of science, such as Scientific Personae In Cultural Encounters (SPICE) and aims to investigate the construction of idealized scientific identities through scientific travel.
Dr. Annika Berg
Her research concentrates on the social, cultural and political history of medicine, healthcare and psychiatry, a field within which she orientates herself towards gender history, questions about welfare, power and government as well as global and postcolonial perspectives.
Within SPICE, she studies travel reports published in Swedish medical journals during the period 1919-1945, as a way to approach the construction of scientific and clinical personae of Swedish medical professionals in the interwar and WWII era.
M.A. Lisa Svanfeldt-Winter
Lisa Svanfeldt-Winter is a PhD student at the Department of History at Stockholm University. For her doctoral dissertation she studies personae of Finnish folklorists in 1919–1951. The study builds on two case studies: Prof. Martti Haavio (1899–1973) and Dr. Elsa Enäjärvi-Haavio (1901–1951), and their interaction with colleagues and folklore informants. She examines how the scholars acted in order to gain recognition as good folklorists both within their field of research and among a broader audience. She is especially interested in the role of gender and in the simultaneous impact of nationalism and internationalism in the persona constructions.
M.A. Rozemarijn van de Wal
Rozemarijn van de Wal is a PhD student with project SPICE at the University of Groningen. She finished her MA in history in 2014 with a thesis on Beatrix Potter for which she was recently awarded a conference fellowship from the Beatrix Potter Society. For her PhD van de Wal is researching the concept of ‘scientific persona’ by writing a biography of Eileen Power (1889-1940). Power was a British medieval historian and pioneer in the fields of women’s history and social and economic history. In 1931 she became the second female professor in economic history at LSE. In her biography van de Wal tries to understand how Eileen Power, as a woman, was able to become so successful.
M.A. Anna Cabanel
Anna Cabanel is a PhD student with project SPICE since December 2014. She conducts her project in co-tutelle between the University of Groningen (Netherlands) and KU Leuven (Belgium). Her research focuses on the International Federation of University Women (IFUW) and aims to investigate its role in the promotion and recognition of women in science and academia (1920-1970). She particularly pays attention to the fellowship programme of this organisation to look how an ideal-type of scholarly persona was shaped and promoted among women scholars. Her study will include a comparison between three national case studies – namely France, Norway and England – in order to highlight the dynamics and interactions at stake between the IFUW and its national branches.