|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Isabelle Bareither
Berlin School of Mind and Brain, Humboldt University
Email: bareither(at)tatwortwissen(dot)de
|
As a doctoral student at The Berlin School Of Mind And Brain, I am working with neuroscientific methods, including EEG and fMRI. My research interest lies in the effects of spontaneous brain activity on behaviour and perception. And as a critically engaged science journalist, I'm interested in the effects that the results of these methods have on the public. My journalism acknowledges that while the new methods are great advances of the sciences, they also have their limitations, and results should be treated more carefully than they currently often are.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Felicity Callard
Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin
Email: fcallard(at)mpiwg-berlin(dot)mpg(dot)de
|
Felicity Callard is a social scientist with an interdisciplinary background that includes geography, critical theory, and the history and sociology of psychiatry. Her doctorate from The Johns Hopkins University entailed working at the intersection of the humanities, history of psychiatry, cultural studies and social theory. Specifically, she explored the genealogy of agoraphobia from its emergence as a named condition in the 1870s to its gradual supersession by Panic Disorder in DSM-III, IIIR and IV. She has broad research interests in the history and living present of psychiatry and psychoanalysis. As a postdoctoral fellow at the MPI for history of science, she is working on “The Neurological Adolescent” research programme, and is investigating how the adolescent has been configured (from the late nineteenth century to the present) as a daydreamer through the scientific study of her mental states. This research intersects with an ongoing collaboration with Dr Daniel Margulies (Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive & Brain Sciences, Leipzig) on a critical exploration of the emergent field of resting state functional neuroimaging research.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Suparna Choudhury
Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin
Berlin School of Mind & Brain, Humboldt University
Email: schoudhury(at)mpiwg-berlin(dot)mpg(dot)de
http://www.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/en/research/projects/MRG_Choudhury
|
I am Minerva Junior Professor at the Max Planck Institute for History of Science in Berlin and Associated Researcher at the Berlin School of Mind and Brain. I am currently investigating the development of brain based theories of adolescence through cognitive neuroscience and their functions in contemporary culture. I am interested in the historical development of biological explanations of adolescent behaviours since the 19th century, and in tracing the interactions between contemporary theories of the "teen brain" and emergent issues in the law, public policy and popular culture. I have a background in transcultural psychiatry and cognitive neuroscience.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Lukas Ebensperger
Humboldt University Berlin, Institute of Cultural Studies, Berlin
Email: lebenspe(at)uos(dot)de
|
I am interested in the various intersections and tensions between natural and social sciences with a special emphasis on neuroscience and its influence on public and scientific discourse. My main fields of interest include ontology, hermeneutics and the history and philosophy of technology and science. After completing my Bachelor in Cognitive Science I am currently doing a Masters degree at the Institute of Cultual Studies at Humboldt University in Berlin.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Lutz Fricke
Queen´s University Belfast
Email: l(dot)fricke(at)qub(dot)ac(dot)uk
|
I am Marie-Curie fellow in the ENGLOBE-Initial Training Network (www.englobe-itn.org) funded by the European Commision. The working title of my dissertaion is "Normality, Identity and Normative Frameworks"
Since the massive utilization of statistical data to get knowledge about social affairs in the early 19th century, the mathematical notion of normalcy has permeated every day social life. People describe themselves in terms of normal or abnormal thoughts and desires, they judge other people's behavior along the axis of normalcy and deviance. In addition, public, scientific and political institutions contribute to what counts as normal or standard.
From a philosophical perspective, the notion of normalcy is challenging. This may be due to its manifold implications on various philosophical domains. It structures social perception, it sorts people by their properties and preferences, it sometimes is the basis for political decisions and it raises normative issues since it remains unclear if the normal is to be perceived as the mediocre or the desired.
My project aims to get a better theoretical understanding of the very concept of normalcy, its meanings and its historical dynamics in a globalized world. In order to achieve this goal, three steps are to be taken:
Firstly, the genealogy of the notion has to be linked to methodological considerations which can be utilized to construe a critical understanding of normalcy. Georges Canguilhem’s considerations on the problematic demarcation of normalcy and deviance and Michel Foucault’s work on the techniques of normalization are paramount for this part. The second part will be guided by the question, how normalcy is linked to issues of personal and cultural identity. Charles Taylor’s theory of the self, which for him is situated in cultural and normative frameworks, will provide the background in this part, supplemented and contrasted by Judith Butler’s notion of frame. In the third and last part the then enriched and elaborated theory of normalcy will be reflected on different fields of cultural practices, such as the neuroscientific examination of human affairs. Ian Hacking’s sketchy thoughts on making up people, which are a result of his work on Foucault, will be helpful for this.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Philipp Haueis
Humboldt University of Berlin, Institute of Philosophy
Free University of Berlin, Research Cluster “Languages of Emotion”
Email: haueisph(at)zedat(dot)fu-berlin(dot)de
|
I am currently a research assistant of Professor Slaby at the Cluster "Languages of Emotion", at Free University Berlin. My research interests lie in the intersection of philosophy and history of science, phenomenology and embodied cognition. My MA thesis will be concerned with the philosophy of cognitive neuroscience with a focus on the boundaries between different functional brain areas. My suspicion is that while the practice of rendering these boundaries precise in brain mapping research is successful, it comes at the cost of knowledge loss once neuroscientific insights are used outside the laboratory. To defend this argument I want to conduct further research on the use of neuroscientific knowledge in other sciences (especially psychiatry and clinical medicine), public institutions (especially the law) and the public understanding of the brain (being mediated by the media and popular discourse). Using these case examples as an argument for the epistemic gap between the different sciences and our life-worlds and self-understandings might also call into question the assertion that we are currently experiencing the “Brain Revolution”, which replaces a dualistic understanding of mind and body with the thesis that “minds are brains”.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Jan Cristoph Heilinger
Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities/Institute of Biomedical Ethics
Email: heilingerj(at)philosophie(dot)hu-berlin(dot)de
|
I am a philosopher currently working at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities, Germany, and the Institute of Biomedical Ethics at the University of Zurich, Switzerland. My interests include philosophical anthropology (conceptions of human nature, human self-understanding between nature and culture), philosophy of mind (functions of phenomenal experience, free will) and ethics (including applied ethics of the neurosciences, e.g. the ethics of human biotechnological enhancement, but also meta-ethical questions).
I just finished my Dr. phil. dissertation at the Berlin Humboldt-University after being a visiting scholar at Columbia University, New York.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Daniel S. Margulies
Berlin School of Mind and Brain, Humboldt University Berlin Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig
Email: daniel(dot)margulies(at)gmail(dot)com
|
I am currently a post-doctoral researcher at the Institute for Mind and Brain at Humboldt University, and the MPI for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig, investigating the organizational properties of spontaneous brain dynamics and their implications for patterns of behavior.
Before entering into neuroscience research I studied literature and philosophy. Occasionally, I create art pieces that attempt to interrogate the epistemic assumptions of cognitive neuroscience.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Moritz Merten
Free University, Institute of Social Anthropology, Berlin
Email: moritz(dot)merten(at)fu-berlin(dot)de
|
I am interested in how people perceive and experience public and scientific discourses, and how they incorporate them into the negotiation of their indentity and self-perception. Currently, I am working together with Suparna Choudhury on how teenagers perceive and react to the popular representations of neuroscientific theories about the teenage brain. For my Masters thesis, I conducted ethnographic research with young people with Turkish background living in Berlin, about their reponse to the public discourses about migrant youths and their experiences with everyday racism.
I am also interested in using anthropological methods to analyze and question the various ways in which socially and culturally constructed differences, of, for example, gender, ethnicity or culture, are being naturalized through science. As part of this I work on race and racism in science.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Saskia Kathi Nagel
University Osnabrück, Institute of Cognitive Science, Osnabrück
Email: snagel(at)uni-osnabrueck(dot)de
|
I am at the Institute of Cognitive Science at the University of Osnabrück, Germany. My research interests are in the neurosciences on sensory processing as well as in philosophy in the philosophy of mind and ethics. I completed my PhD in 2008 on the ethical and social consequences of neuroscientific research. During my Masters studies in Cognitive Science I focused on empirical work on multimodal processing (using EEG) and on sensory enhancement. I am interested in the phenomenon of plasticity and the possibilities to study and interpret it. Moreover, I work on questions of the interplay of sciences, humanities, and the public.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Jan Slaby
Free University Berlin, Research Cluster "Languages of Emotion" & Institute of Philosophy
Email: slaby(at)zedat(dot)fu-berlin(dot)de
http://www.janslaby.com
|
I am a Junior Professor in the Research Cluster "Languages of Emotion" and the Institute of Philosophy at Free University Berlin, Germany. My working area is theoretical philosophy, with a focus on philosophy of mind, phenomenology, theories of emotion and feeling, social ontology, personhood, philosophical anthropology and philosophy of science.
I studied philosophy (minor subjects: Sociology, English Studies) at the Humboldt University in Berlin, graduated in 2001 with a thesis on Evolutionary Psychology (area: Philosophy of Science); Ph.D. in philosophy completed in June 2006 at the University of Osnabrück with a thesis on emotions, personhood and intentionality (published as "Gefühl und Weltbezug" with mentis, Paderborn, in 2008). After that I worked as a PostDoc researcher in the interdisciplinary project "Animal Emotionale. Emotions as the Missing Link Between Cognition and Action" (funded by the Volkswagen Foundation), at the Institute for Cognitive Science at the University of Osnabrück. From 2007-2010 I was the speaker of the interdisciplinary project "Neuroscience in Context" (VolkswagenFoundation), in which Critical Neuroscience originated as a subproject. From 2008-2010 I worked as an assistant professor ("akademischer Rat") in theoretical philosophy at Philipps-University Marburg, Germany.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Max Stadler
ETH Zuerich
Email: max.stadler(at)wiss.gess.ethz(dot)ch
|
Max Stadler is a post-doctoral researcher at the Chair for Science Studies, ETH Zuerich. His current research project concerns a history of perception in the 20th century, through the eyes of soldiers, factory-workers, and office-clerks: of the ways human perception was shaped and mediated in factories and zones of war, through man-machine-interactions, and by disciplines such as ergonomics, military psychology and industrial physiology. Very deliberately, this project is conceived as a history of from below, de-centring in our accounts the more usual suspects: (neuro)science, art and the philosophers; a book manuscript on the (material) history of the nervous impulse is also in preparation
Max has obtained his PhD in the history of science, technology and medicine from CHoSTM, Imperial College London in 2010. Prior to coming to ETH, he was a pre- and post-doctoral fellow at the Max-Planck-Institute for the History of Science (2009-2010), where he continued to pursue his doctoral research interests in the history of the nervous system in the 20th century. The two workshops he co-organized, "Membranes, Surfaces and Boundaries" (MPIWG Berlin, October 2010) and "Neuro-Reality Check" (MPIWG Berlin, December 2011), were/are by-products of this work. Max also holds a B.Sc in Cognitive Science, and a M.Sc in the History of Science.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
