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The field of science studies has long examined the conditions, forms, and implications of interdisciplinary work. Historians, sociologists, and philosophers of science address questions such as what distinguishes interdisciplinary from multidisciplinary research, how knowledge is integrated across disciplinary boundaries, how interdisciplinary fields emerge and stabilize, how researchers navigate conflicting methods, standards, and epistemic cultures in collaborative settings, and whether interdisciplinarity is an epistemic necessity or primarily a policy-driven ideal.

To bring together science-reflective topics as well as practical experiences from interdisciplinary research projects, funding organizations, and institutes dedicated to interdisciplinary research, the Center for Interdisciplinary Research (ZiF) and the Institute for Studies of Science (ISoS) have jointly organized a lecture series, titled "Interdisciplinarity in Scientific Research: Perspectives from Practice and Science Studies".

You can now find the full programme and further details here.

Everyone interested is warmly invited to attend the lectures and join the conversation.

We are delighted to welcome Dr. Guillermo Restrepo as a new member of ISoS and as the holder of a DFG "Eigene Stelle" (Individual Research Grant) to conduct research at the intersection of history, data science, and chemistry.

Guillermo joins us from the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences in Leipzig, where he has led a project on the computational history of chemistry. By analysing vast historical datasets (scientific publications, chemical substances, and synthesis methods) using mathematical and computational tools, he uncovers hidden patterns in the evolution of chemical knowledge. His new DFG project, titled "Material, Social and Semiotic Dimensions of the Discovery of Substances over the History of Chemistry", explores how we understand the evolution of chemical knowledge as a dynamic interplay of people, materials, and language.

At the heart of Guillermo’s research is a bold question: How did the chemical space, the vast collection of known substances and reactions, evolve over the past two centuries? His project uses large-scale digital data from databases like Reaxys, Scopus, and OpenAlex to trace the historical expansion of chemistry through a unique triad of material, social, and semiotic dimensions. The material dimension involves the substances, reactions, and technologies that shaped chemical practice. The social dimension is based on institutions, nations, and networks that drove discovery. The semiotic dimension incorporates the language, journals, patents, and naming conventions that communicated and codified chemical knowledge.

By analysing millions of chemical records from 1800 to 2023, Guillermo aims to uncover patterns that reveal how wars, economic crises, and political shifts left their mark on chemistry, and how the very structure of the discipline evolved over time.

Guillermo’s background is interdisciplinary. Trained as a chemist at the Universidad Industrial de Santander (Colombia), he holds a MSc in Chemistry from the same university and a PhD in mathematical chemistry from Bayreuth University (Germany) and has spent years bridging the gap between the humanities and the sciences. He held postdoctoral positions at Bayreuth University in mathematics and at Texas A&M University-Galveston in mathematical chemistry. He also held an Alexander von Humboldt fellowship to conduct research on the computational history of chemistry at Leipzig University, before moving to the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences in Leipzig, where he conducted research for about a decade.

His work has been published in multidisciplinary journals like Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and Proceedings of the Royal Society A, and in specialised journals in the sciences and the humanities such as Nature Chemistry, and Angewandte Chemie, and in Ambix, the leading journal in the history of chemistry.

Welcome, Guillermo, and great to have you on board!

A few day ago, a new special issue in "Animal History" (University of California Press) on historical human-technology-animal relations was published!

Most contributions to the special issue are now available online.

The issue grew out of the international workshop "From Passive Livestock to Untamed Beings: Reanimating Animals in the History of Technology," held at the Technical University of Berlin in 2024.

In his introductory essay, “Toward an Animated History of Technology,” ISoS member Christian Zumbrägel argues for a more systematic integration of animals into the history of technology and proposes a conceptual framework for understanding how animals have enabled, shaped, challenged, and sometimes disrupted technological actions in the past. Read the introduction here: https://doi.org/10.1525/ah.2026.134

Explore the special issue and read the exciting papers by Vanessa Bateman, Corinna Röver, Christoph Borbach, and Daniel Bowman!

As part of this semester's ISoS Lecture series on Scientific Concepts, ISoS is very pleased to welcome Nancy Cartwright (Durham University & UC San Diego) to Bielefeld and warmly invites participation in the following two events:

ISoS Lecture with Nancy Cartwright

7 July 2026, 16:15–17:45

Talk: In Defense of Ambiguity

Venue: Lecture Hall X‑E0‑001, X‑Building, Bielefeld University

The lecture is open to all; no registration required.

Work‑in‑Progress Workshop with Nancy Cartwright

8 July 2026, 09:00–13:00

Program and further information: https://www.uni-bielefeld.de/zwe/isos/events/lectures/workshop/ 

Registration for the workshop is required due to limited space. If you would like to take part, please register until 30 June via isos@uni-bielefeld.de. Readings will be circulated beforehand.

ISoS is delighted to welcome Pravajya Pandey who recently joined the Department of Philosophy at Bielefeld University as a doctoral researcher in the MSCA Doctoral Network TRANSCEND under the supervision of Lara Keuck.

Before joining TRANSCEND, Pravajya completed both her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Philosophy at the University of Delhi. Her academic background has broadly centered on philosophy of science, medicine, ethics, and mental health, with a particular interest in how medical and social classifications shape lived experience, self-understanding, and questions of epistemic justice. Much of her recent work has focused on ADHD, neurodiversity, institutional epistemology, and philosophy of psychiatry, especially in relation to gendered experiences and forms of epistemic marginalization. She is also interested in broader questions concerning translational medicine, patient perspectives in biomedical research, and the relationship between conceptual analysis and empirical scientific practice.

Alongside these themes, Pravajya has also worked on topics in AI ethics, political philosophy, and contemporary Indian philosophy. Her doctoral project in TRANSCEND examines “scoping methods” in translational biomedical research — methods that evaluate how experimental models and interventions are matched to real-world diseases and patient-relevant outcomes. More specifically, Pravajya is interested in how these methods can be philosophically and conceptually analyzed in order to better understand the relationship between biomedical models, disease classifications, and patient experience, particularly in the context of complex and heterogeneous medical conditions.

As part of the TRANSCEND network, Pravajya looks forward to engaging with interdisciplinary discussions across philosophy, medicine, and science studies, and to contributing to the broader research environment at ISoS.

For more information on TRANSCEND and Pravajya's project: 

https://biomed.au.dk/transcend-network/about  

https://biomed.au.dk/transcend-network/work-packages/focusing-on-patient-outcomes/reframing-autism-a-historical-perspective-on-shifting-models-and-meanings 

We are excited to welcome Dr. Marcus Carrier, who has joined ISoS in April 2026 as a postdoctoral researcher in the new research project „Edition Wissenschaftliche Software“ (EWS), funded by the Union of the German Academies of Sciences and Humanities.

In the EWS project, researchers from the universities of Bielefeld and Aachen as well as from the Deutsches Museum in Munich will focus on collecting, preserving and studying sources related to the digitalization of the sciences in the second half of the twentieth century.

As a member of the Bielefeld project site, Marcus will concentrate on collecting and processing software and documents, as well as conducting oral history interviews - particularly in the field of chemistry - in close collaboration with the teams in Aachen and Munich. A special focus of research at the Bielefeld project site will be on instrument software; for example, programs used for the analysis of NMR or IR spectroscopy, as well as simulation software for reaction pathways. While methods such as NMR or IR have significantly shaped how chemistry is practiced, the corresponding software has so far received rather little attention as a subject of study in its own right. Marcus’ research interests range from the history of science, medicine, and technology in the 19th and 20th centuries, over how computational methods shape science, to expertise, the development of forensic sciences, and the ways gender and the body are conceptualized within the sciences.

Marcus holds a PhD in History from Bielefeld University on a work on chemical expertise in 19th-century poisoning trials  in Franco-German comparison. Prior to finishing his PhD, he studied History and Chemistry (BA) as well as History, Philosophy and Sociology of Science (MA) at Bielefeld University. Before joining EWS, Marcus was a research associate in the history of science at TU Berlin from 2024 to 2026. Further stations include a short-term fellowship at the Science History Institute, Philadelphia, US (Fall 2022), a Junior Fellowship at the Käthe Hamburger Kolleg "Cultures of Research" at RWTH Aachen (2023–2024) as well as a Career Bridge scholarship of the Bielefeld Young Researchers' Fund in Bielefeld (2022–2023).

We are delighted to have Marcus on board!

If you’re interested in learning more about Marcus’ research:

Carrier, Marcus B. Der Wert von Methoden: Forensische Toxikologie des 19. Jahrhunderts im deutsch-französischen Vergleich. Springer VS, 2023. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-41633-1.

Hocquet, Alexandre, Frédéric Wieber, und Marcus B. Carrier. „And the Winner is…Alphafold!“ Society for Social Studies of Science – Backchannels, 9. Februar 2025. https://4sonline.org/news_manager.php?page=39360.

In a new article in The Transmitter, ISoS Executive Board member Lara Keuck, together with Linda Douw (Amsterdam UMC) and Klaus Eyer (Aarhus University), discuss complexity and heterogeneity as defining characteristics of systems in basic neuroscience and introduce the idea and aims of the new TRANSCEND network.

Read the article here.

The TRANSCEND network is a new European doctoral network funded with approximately 4 million Euros under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) of Horizon Europe. It was initiated and conceptualized by Lara Keuck together with Klaus Eyer and Linda Douw with the support of a Branco Weiss Collaborative Grant.

More information on TRANSCEND can be found here.

We are pleased to announce that the programme of the ISoS Lectures is online!

In the summer term 2026, the ISoS Lectures will have a special focus on the topic of "Scientific Concepts". To see the programme, please visit: https://www.uni-bielefeld.de/zwe/isos/events/lectures/.

The ISoS Lectures currently take place Tuesdays, from 16:15 to 17:45 in room X-E1-200 and over Zoom.

To receive invitation e-mails and updates on the individual lecture sessions, please message to isos[at]uni-bielefeld.de to become member of our mailing list.

The workshop “Representing, Reshaping, Reenacting”, co-organized by ISoS members Dr. Michele Luchetti and Dr. Sasha Bergstrom-Katz (both members of the Research Group in the History and Philosophy of Medicine), took place at the Charité Museum of Medical History in Berlin on 15-16 November 2025.

For more on workshop, read Anatolii Kozlov’s recent report for the Society for the Social History of Medicine: https://sshm.org/2026/02/05/representing-reshaping-reenacting/.

On 6 March 2026, the workshop “Med Methods – Experimental Research and Teaching Methods in the Medical Humanities and the Philosophy of Medicine” brought together an interdisciplinary group of scholars to reflect on how innovative methodologies can foster research and teaching in the humanities on medicine, health, and the human experience of illness.

Participants included philosophers and historians of medicine, as well as medical educators and artists coming from the UK, Norway, Canada, and Germany.

Hosted by the ISoS-affiliated Research Group in the History and Philosophy of Medicine at Bielefeld University and organized by Michele Luchetti and Lara Keuck, the workshop explored how experiential, participatory, and art-based methods can open up new ways of teaching and researching topics such as assisted dying, medical measurement, and the experience of disability.

Many contributions included hands-on activities that engaged participants’ senses and creativity, stimulating reflection while enacting in practice the methodological approaches under discussion. Other contributions addressed the transferability of medical humanities teaching across different contexts, the use of visual art prompts and art-theoretical approaches in teaching philosophy of medicine, and the importance of material encounters for preventing philosophy from reducing the complexity of lived experience.

A final roundtable discussion, prompted by short inputs from Research Group members Alfred Freeborn and Nele Röttger, addressed several overarching questions raised during the workshop: What is the role of research and teaching in the medical humanities? How do shared learning experiences, creative spaces, and even moments of awkwardness shape us as learners and researchers?

To learn more about the activities of the History and Philosophy of Medicine group, click here.

Impressions from the workshop: