Research

Research

Working as curator and historian in the field of medical humanities, I combine history of science and medicine with the study of material and visual culture. My research focuses on d/Deafness, bodily fluids, and medical heritage.

1. Rendering Deafness Visible

The aim of my postdoc project titled ‘Deafness in Transition’ (2019–2022) – funded by a Dutch Research Council Rubicon grant – is to uncover cultural experiences and transitions in medical perception of deafness in early modern Europe. I focus on both social and medical perceptions of deafness, which includes both profoundly deaf people and those with hearing difficulties as the result of disease, accident, old age, or changing social and cultural requirements. This provides a new and more inclusive vintage-point to look at d/Deaf history.

2. Blood, Sweat and Tears

My PhD project ‘Blood, Sweat and Tears’ (2013–2018) – part of the Dutch Research Council VIDI-project ‘Vital Matters’ – investigates how the chemistry of bodily fluids helped establish a new medical system in eighteenth-century Europe. Successfully defended in 2018, my dissertation ‘Fluid Bodies’ argues that at the turn of the eighteenth century, the introduction of new chemical research methods and instruments crucially changed the perception of bodily fluids, which contributed to a new understanding of the human body and a new system of medicine.

 3. Heritage Matters

Curators are used to analyse objects still extant today, but I also study those materials that have not been stored and saved. Although this poses its challenges, I develop innovative methods to reconstruct and present past collections and think about the materiality of materials in the history of science and medicine.