Profile

We at the Chair of History of Science at the University of Erfurt consider our work as historical knowledge research. Our approach to this topic employs the programme of a historical epistemology and emphasises its political and practical dimension. We understand sciences as relational structures, as ensembles of practices and habits, of norms and ideals, communications, media and objects. We investigate constellations in which knowledge itself becomes thematic, ask about the emergence and stabilisation of knowledge, about its transformations and deconstructions, about normal and exceptional states, about historical qualifications of objective, perspectival or true knowledge.

Our research focuses on the history of the humanities, social sciences, humanities and psychology from the 19th century to the present day. Specifically, we research the history of science in Eastern Europe, the history of social and developmental psychology, the history of habit and the historical praxeology of truth.

The chair for the History of Science moved from the Max-Weber-Kolleg to the History Department of the Faculty of Philosophy in the 2020 winter semester. It is closely linked to the Centre for Transcultural Studies / Perthes Collection, the Gotha Research Centre and the graduate centre History of Knowledge in the Modern Era .

We organise annual pre- and postdoctoral researcher workshops: the Literature and History of Science Study Day (with the FU Berlin, the MPI for the History of Science and others) and the History of Psychology Writing Workshop (with the Forum Geschichte der Humanwissenschaften) as well as the South/Eastern and Central European Histories of Science and Humanities Workshop (with the University of Vienna and the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic).

Teaching on the BA degree programme covers a broad range of the entire history of science (from the Scientific Revolution to the present day; including the history of biology and anthropology), while teaching on the MA degree programmes in history and the collection-related history of knowledge and culture is research-oriented.

The content and methodological orientation of the professorship is also reflected in the publication series Historische Wissensforschung (HWF) and Historische Wissensforschung Essay (HWFE) published by Mohr-Siebeck (the volumes are now open access), which has been published by Wallstein-Verlag since 2023. B. Kleeberg is Editor-in-Chief of NTM - Zeitschrift für Geschichte der Wissenschaften, Technology und Medizin, the organ of the GWMT.