Utrecht 木瓜福利影视 is growing as a center for research, education and exchange of knowledge concerning the historical and philosophical understanding of the life sciences and its relation to societal challenge
Our growing team engages in diverse topics. Historians and philosophers of the life sciences at Utrecht are active fellows of the Descartes Centre for the History and Philosophy of the Sciences and the Humanities. They also collaborate with colleagues across different faculties offering . We invite you to engage with us to become a part of the community!
People and projects
Our growing team engages in diverse topics. We invite you to read about the following researchers and research projects and contact our staff in case you have any inquiries.
Hieke Huistra
Historian of science and medicine. Research interests: history of medicine; medicalization; childbirth; dying; euthanasia; material culture; science and the public; medical risk factors; fatness; obesity; museums; collections; anatomical collections; nineteenth century; twentieth century; digital humanities. Some of Hieke's research projects can be found under the Freudenthal's Institute Website.
Federica Russo
Federica continues her research on methodology of the biomedical sciences, including public health. At the moment, she is investigating how complexity approaches can shed new light on questions of causality and evidence, and how complexity approaches can also help address policy problems in a different way. At the same time, Federica is involved in a collaboration with Guido Caniglia, to rethink evidence in the light of interconnected health-environmental challenges, and this requires putting sustainability science and public health in into a fruitful dialogue.
Elian Schure
I am a historian of science with an interest in science in a colonial and post-colonial context. I specialise in philosophy and history of the life sciences. In my PhD research, I combine my interests by studying the concept of race/ ethnicity in microbiome research in South Africa.
By researching these topics, I hope to gain and spread knowledge about the role the Dutch Empire and Dutch scientists played in the former colonies. I am especially interested in how scientific knowledge created in the colonial period still influences society today.
I am part of the Microbiome research and race in the 'Local South' project under supervision of Abigail Nieves Delgado
Robert-Jan Wille
Robert-Jan wrote his dissertation on the history of the evolutionary life sciences in the Dutch Empire, focusing on tropical botany and marine zoology. He has since moved on to the history of atmospheric physics and meteorology, but he still addresses the same questions: how do politics and science interfere, what is the relationship between imperialism and big science, and how do scientists imagine their disciplines in a larger world? Robert-Jan has a special interest in the "historical paleo-sciences" in the colorful spectrum of knowledge: paleoclimatology, paleobotany, paleontology, and paleoanthropology. He has also published on the Krakatoa eruption and all the sciences that emerged from it, with scholars studying not only historical volcanic eruptions, but also botanical colonization, atmospheric westerlies, and noctilucent clouds. Not surprisingly, his favorite movie is Jurassic Park (1993), about a meteorological event that disrupts the plans of a capitalist zoo tycoon and his multidisciplinary army of nerds.
Abigail Nieves Delgado
I am an assistant professor at the Freudenthal Institute, Utrecht 木瓜福利影视. My research focuses on the history and philosophy of the life sciences and physical anthropology. The main aim of my research is to stop racism in science and society. To do that, I study racialization practices in the history of science as well as in contemporary biomedical research (e.g., in microbiome research and epigenetics) and in biometric technologies (e.g., facial recognition). I also investigate the politics of transdisciplinary knowledge production and the history of ethnobiology in Latin America.
I teach widely in history and philosophy of science and give courses on scientific integrity and values in science. Before coming to Utrecht, I worked at Wageningen 木瓜福利影视, NL, Ruhr 木瓜福利影视 Bochum, GER, and the National Autonomous 木瓜福利影视 of Mexico (Ph.D. 2016).
I am the principal investigator of the project "Microbiome research and race in the 'Local South'" funded by the NWO.