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The European Research Council (ERC) has awarded a Consolidator Grant of 2 million euros to historian Dr Willemijn Ruberg (Cultural History) to conduct research into the history of forensic science in Europe in the twentieth century. The Consolidator Grant will allow Willemijn Ruberg to set up her own team of researchers and study the history of forensic medicine and psychiatry during a five-year period (2018-2023).

The history of CSI

Television shows such as CSI and Criminal Minds lean heavily on science and technology which seems to ensure that justice is done equally for everyone, providing impartial and unambiguous results. However, in reality, the role and impact of scientifically-based evidence depends on where the court is located. National differences exist between the role and impact of scientists, doctors and psychiatrists who act as expert witnesses in court. How can these differences be explained?

Forensic culture

The project Forensic Culture. A Comparative Analysis of Forensic Practices in Europe, 1930-2000 (FORCe) starts from the idea that cultural ideas and practices have been major determinants in the position of science in the courtroom. To expose the power of culture, the project will compare forensic practices in four European countries (the Netherlands, England, Spain and Russia) with differing legal systems and ideologies. It will focus on criminal cases in which gender plays an important role, such as rape, murder and infanticide. These cases often play out in the media as well as the courtroom and can demonstrate the influence of cultural images of gender on the role of European forensic science.

Apart from legal records, the primary sources that the team members of FORCe will analyse include newspapers, scientific publications and autobiographies written by forensic scientists.

So far forensic science, medicine and psychiatry have been studied separately. My research project will compare how knowledge is made in all branches of forensic science. Moreover, its cultural-historical and comparative approach is innovative. This approach helps us to understand how, for instance, images of gender and objectivity impact the administration of justice. In this way we can explain better how scientific expertise works in practice.

Willemijn Ruberg

Willemijn Ruberg is associate professor of Modern Cultural History at the Department of History and Art History. Her research has focused on the history of expertise, gender and the body. She is part of the research group of cultural historians that focuses on the history of knowledge.

ERC Consolidator Grant

The ERC's mission is to encourage the highest quality research in Europe through competitive funding and to support investigator-driven frontier research across all fields, on the basis of scientific excellence. ERC Consolidator Grants are designed to support excellent Principal Investigators at the career stage at which they may still be consolidating their own independent research team or program. Applicant Principal Investigators must demonstrate the ground-breaking nature, ambition and feasibility of their scientific proposal.