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Dr Helga Satzinger

My broad area of interest is the history of science in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries from the perspective of gender studies. I am particularily interested in the life sciences such as biology, genetics, brain research and how social and symbolic gender orders are negotiated in the sciences. My latest book presents three case studies in genetics and hormone research where scientific concepts of gender difference were developed in incompatible ways but with far reaching political consequences. I also study the history of women working in the sciences, thus contributing to our understanding of the gendered nature of science as a workplace. My current work focuses on the connections between concepts of gendered and racial orders in twentieth century life sciences.

I am co-editor of the Medizinhistorisches Journal / Medicine and the Life Sciences in History, a peer reviewed journal publishing in German and English. http://www.steiner-verlag.de/MedHist/

Areas of Research Supervision

History of the sciences, of medicine, of gender and of race, 19th and 20th Centuries.

PhD Theses Currently Supervised

- Viral Insanity: The Medical Construction of Encephalitis Lethargica, 1917-1930

- Mapping Women's Health: Curative Spaces in Britain and its Empire, 1860-1928

PhD Theses Supervised

- The 'Globulisation' of the Hospital Wards in Nineteenth-Century Europe

- Family Conflicts, Civil Incapacity and Mental Disorders. The Rise of Chilean Early Psychiatric Culture (1840-1920)

- Nature's Ethos: Zoology, Psychology and Morality in Imperial Britain (co-supervised)

MA Dissertations Supervised

Sex (Mal)Formations: British Gynaecology from 1870-1914

Select Publications

Differenz und Vererbung: Geschlechterordnungen in der Genetik und Hormonforschung 1890–1950 [Heredity and Difference: Gender Orders in Genetics and Hormone Research, 1890-1950] Published in German: Böhlau Verlag, Köln, Weimar, Wien 2009 (486 pp., ill., bibl., index) [English version forthcoming]. See: http://www.boehlau-verlag.com/978-3-412-20339-9.html

Concepts of Gender Differences in Genetics. In: Brandt, Christina; Rheinberger, Hans-Jörg; Mueller-Wille, Staffan (eds.): Heredity explored: Between Public Domain and Experimental Science. Cambridge MA, MIT Press, 2013 (forthcoming).

The Politics of Gender Concepts in Genetics and Hormone Research in Germany, 1900-1950. In: Gender History Across Epistemologies, special issue of Gender History, Vol 24,3, 2012, pp. 735-754.

Außenseiter: Cécile und Oskar Vogts Hirnforschung um 1900. (Outsiders: C+O Vogt’s Brain Research ca. 1900), in: Bleker, Johanna; Hulverscheidt, Marion; Lennig, Petra (Eds.): Visiten. Berliner Impulse zur Entwicklung der modernen Medizin. (Berlin: Cadmos 2011) pp. 179-195.

Berlin-Frankfurt. Die Kaiser-Wilhelm- / Max-Planck-Institute für Hirnforschung. In: Gruss, Peter; Rürup, Reinhard (eds.): Denkorte. Max-Planck-Gesellschaft und Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gesellschaft: Brüche und Kontinuitäten, 1911-2011. (Sandstein Verlag: Dresden 2010) pp. 292-301.

Science, commentary. In: Wecker, Regina; Braunschweig, Sabine; Imboden, Gabriela; Küchenhoff, Bernhard; Ritter, Hans Jakob (eds.): Wie nationalsozialistisch ist die Eugenik? What is National Socialist about Eugenics? International Debates on the History of Eugenics in the 20th Century. Böhlau Verlag: Wien, Köln, Weimar, 2009, pp. 265-269.

Racial Purity, Stable Genes and Sex Difference. Gender in the Making of Genetic Concepts by Richard Goldschmidt and Fritz Lenz, 1916-1936. In: Heim, Susanne; Sachse, Carola; Walker, Mark (eds): The Kaiser Wilhelm Society under National Socialism. Cambridge: New York, Cambridge Univ. Press, 2009, pp. 145-170.

Theodor and Marcella Boveri: Chromosomes and Cytoplasm in Heredity and Development. In: Nature Reviews Genetics, Vol. 9, March 2008, pp. 231-238. http://www.nature.com/nrg/journal/v9/n3/full/nrg2311.html

The Chromosomal Theory of Heredity and the Problem of Gender Equality in the Work of Theodor and Marcella Boveri. In: Conference. A Cultural History of Heredity III: 19th and Early 20th Centuries. Preprint 294, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin, 2005, pp.102-114. 


http://www.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/Preprints/P294.PDF

Equating Disease and Race. Political and Scientific Dimensions of a Biomedical Research Programme by Cécile and Oskar Vogt between Tbilisi and Berlin, 1919-1939.

Available online at: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/silva/histmed/downloads/equating_disease.pdf

(= Translation of: Krankheiten als Rassen. Politische und wissenschaftliche Dimensionen eines internationalen Forschungsprogramms am Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut für Hirnforschung (1919-1939). In: Schmuhl, Walter (ed.): Rassenforschung an Kaiser-Wilhelm-Instituten vor und nach 1933 Göttingen: Wallstein 2003, pp. 145-189 [nearly identical paper in: Medizinhistorisches Journal 37, 2002, pp. 301-350.])

Feminity and Science: The Brain Researcher Cécile Vogt (1875-1962).

Available online at: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/silva/histmed/downloads/cecile_vogt_transl.pdf

(= Translation of: Weiblichkeit und Wissenschaft - Das Beispiel der Hirnforscherin Cécile Vogt (1875-1962). In: Bleker, Johanna (Hg.): Der Eintritt der Frauen in die Gelehrtenrepublik. Zur Geschlechterfrage im akademischen Selbstverständnis und in der wissenschaftlichen Praxis am Anfang des 20. Jahrhunderts. [Women Entering the Republic of Scientists. Gender in Academic Identity and Scientific Practise in Early 20th c.] Husum: Matthiesen 1998, pp. 75-93.)