Wellcome Trust Post-Doctoral Fellowships at LHRI

Leeds Humanities Research Institute (LHRI), University of Leeds

Wellcome ISSF Post-Doctoral Fellowships

Deadline 23 January 2017


The University of Leeds has been awarded a grant of £1.25m over 5 years from the Wellcome Trust ISSF to support biomedical and related research, which has been matched by an equal investment by the University. A major component of this funding will support early career researchers in order to enable them to realise their potential, and position themselves for competitive external Fellowship applications. We therefore seek applications from candidates at either the latter stages of their PhD work, or after one or two post-doctoral positions, dependent on the type of Fellowship envisioned. Previous rounds have supported researchers from Medical Humanities and Social Sciences, as well as the wider academic areas of Medicine and Health.

These awards will cover both salary costs and a contribution towards consumables, aligned to the needs of the proposed work. Applications are invited from any Faculty, but applicants should be working within the Wellcome Trust remit (see http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/Funding/index.htm).

Applications will be considered on an annual basis. For the 2017 round, applicants should complete the appropriate proforma by 23 January 2017. The ISSF Management Committee will then assess the applications and invite shortlisted candidates for interview during the week commencing 13 February 2017 (TBC). The interview will consist of a short (5 minute) presentation by the candidate, followed by questions from the panel, which will comprise a subset of the Management Committee representing the breadth of academic interests within the ISSF portfolio.

Each award will normally be up to £50K, and applicants should provide a detailed justification for the funds requested. It is expected that these awards will normally run for a maximum of 12 months. If awarded, an appropriate timescale will be agreed and any funds remaining unspent at the end will be withheld for re-allocation in subsequent funding rounds. Awards will be available immediately, or may be taken up at any time during the calendar year following the award, dependent on your current funding position. We invite applications from Leeds-based individuals who are planning to apply for external Fellowships to remain in Leeds, or external candidates intending to move to Leeds.

For more information on these fellowships and how to apply, please go to http://www.leeds.ac.uk/arts/news/article/4011/wellcomelhri_postdoctoral_fellowships

On the LHRI and the range of activities it supports, please go to our website, http://www.leeds.ac.uk/arts/info/20045/leeds_humanities_research_institute

History of Pre-Modern Medicine: ‘Gardens of Improvement: Scientific, agricultural and botanical landscapes created by British medical practitioners in the late Georgian period’

History of Pre-Modern Medicine with Dr Clare Hickman (KCL), Tuesday 19th January

Abstract: This paper will explore how gardens were designed and used by medical practitioners as places for scientific experimentation, botanical education and agricultural improvements during the late eighteenth-century. Beginning with the rural retreat of John Coakley Lettsom at Grove Hill where he combined agricultural interests, particularly the cultivation of the mangle-wurzel root vegetable, with an ornamental landscape, it will also consider the private gardens of John Hunter and Edward Jenner. These examples will be employed to consider how their owners’ personal interests were manifested in their physical use of designed landscapes. Such private gardens were part of a wider network of botanical and agricultural landscapes, which included the seats of the landed gentry as well as more public botanic gardens. Plants and ideas moved between these spaces so other relevant gardens will also be considered. There was a renewed interest in botanic gardens at this time and those under consideration include William Curtis’ London Botanic Garden which was funded through subscription, the Edinburgh Botanic Garden established by John Hope and used to train medical students, and the botanic garden at Glasnevin in Dublin which initially operated under the wider purpose of botanical education for the labouring classes. By investigating these spaces I hope to explore aspects of botanical networks, the role of the garden as scientific space, and the function of gardens for knowledge production and dissemination.


This research forms part of my wider Wellcome Medical History & Humanities Fellowship exploring the ‘Garden as a Laboratory’.

Our location will be the Wellcome Library, 183 Euston Road, London, NW1 2BE.
Doors open at 6pm and we'll start the seminar at 6.15pm. 

More info on the History of Pre-Modern Medicine series: http://blog.wellcomelibrary.org/2015/01/pre-modern-medicine-seminars-spring-2015-programme/

Ross MacFarlane
Research Engagement Officer
Wellcome Library
Wellcome Trust
Gibbs Building
215 Euston Road
London NW1 2BE, UK

T +44 (0)20 7611 7340
F +44 (0)20 7611 8369
E r.macfarlane@wellcome.ac.uk
http://wellcomelibrary.org

We are a global charitable foundation dedicated to achieving extraordinary improvements in human and animal health. We support the brightest minds in biomedical research and the medical humanities. Our breadth of support includes public engagement, education and the application of research to improve health. We are independent of both political and commercial interests.

The Wellcome Trust is a charity registered in England and Wales, no. 210183. Its sole trustee is The Wellcome Trust Limited, a company registered in England and Wales, no. 2711000 (whose registered office is at 215 Euston Road, London NW1 2BE, UK).

CALL FOR PAPERS Ars Effectiva et Methodus: The Body in Early Modern Science and Thought

Herzog August Library Wolfenbüttel, 30 June – 1 July 2014

Organised by Karin Friedrich (Aberdeen) with the support of the Herzog August Library, Wolfenbüttel, the Aberdeen Humanities Fund/Hunter Caldwell Awards and the Centre for Early Modern Studies, University of Aberdeen (Scotland)

This is a call for papers for a conference that focuses on the influence of Melanchthon’s methodus et ars on the definition and meaning of the body – both real and metaphorical and across the disciplines. It builds on a symposium on the formation of scholarly disciplines and networks spun between Scotland and Northern Europe around the Scottish polymath Duncan Liddel (1561-1613) which was held at the University of Aberdeen 8-10 May 2013. Supported by the Wellcome Trust, it initiated a research project on Liddel’s library (held in Aberdeen) and his time at the University of Helmstedt from 1595-1607.

Following Renaissance medicine’s approach, we see ars medica penetrating all innermost parts of nature and combining all disciplines, from medicine to cosmography to ethics, and employing empirical observation. Triggered first by epidemics such as the Black Death and, in the sixteenth century, the ‘French Disease’, trust in Aristotelian and Galenic medical traditions suffered a setback in favour of the rise of broadly Neo-Platonist occult concepts, reflected in the work of Paracelsus, Fracastoro, Fernel and other innovators. Alongside this shift, empirical approaches began to flourish, especially in relation to anatomy and the physical body, just as Aristotelianism began to give way to the new philosophy. In Liber de anima (1540), for example, Melanchthon insisted that knowledge of our bodies’ anatomy gave us self-knowledge about our souls and revealed God’s workmanship within us. Anatomy became a natural philosophical endeavour that could help to maintain doctrinal coherence in the church.

As Humanist scholars of medicine and related disciplines explored the possibilities of new epistemologies and methodologies, a growing European republic of letters gained significance. With a particular interest in the role of polymathic networks and their discourses, particularly Lutheran and humanist networks, we need to ask how, during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, new concepts of the human body contributed to the development and differentiation of scientific disciplines in the post-medieval world, right up to what was later labelled the ‘Scientific Revolution’.

Themes for exploration are:
Bodies physical and metaphysical
Knowledge of bodies and bodies of knowledge: the development of disciplines
Teaching the Body: didactic scholarship
Heavenly bodies and down to earth: From astronomy to astrology and alchemy
The ‘Body Politic’ as an epistemological resource
‘Body of Proof’: Medicine, Method and Humanist discourses

Proposals (not longer than 350 words, or one page A4, stating the address from which you will travel) for papers addressing the themes of the conference (papers are limited to 20 minutes) are accepted in German, English or French and should be sent by 7 March (preferably via email) to:

k.friedrich@abdn.ac.uk
Professor Dr Karin Friedrich
Chair of Early Modern History
Deputy Head of School (Divinity, History and Philosophy) for History
Co-director Centre for Early Modern Studies (CEMS)

University of Aberdeen
Crombie Annexe 207
Meston Walk
Aberdeen AB24 3FX
Tel. +44- (0) 1224-272451

http://www.abdn.ac.uk/cems
k.friedrich@abdn.ac.uk

History of Pre-Modern Medicine Seminar

The next seminar in the 2013-14 History of Pre-Modern Medicine academic seminar series, will take place on Tuesday 19th November.

Details: Emilie Savage-Smith (Oxford)

A Literary History of Medicine: The Best Accounts of the Classes of Physicians by Ibn Abī Uṣaybiʿah (d. 1270)

Abstract:

In the mid-13th century, a practising physician in Syria by the name of Ibn Abi Usaybi`ah set himself the task of recording the history of medicine throughout the known world. His book "The Best Accounts of the Classes of Physicians" covers 1700 years of medical practice, from the mythological beginnings of medicine with Asclepius through Greece, Rome, and India, down to the author's day.

Written as much to entertain as to inform, it is not only the earliest comprehensive history of medicine but the most important and ambitious of the medieval period, incorporating accounts of over 442 physicians – their training, their practice, and their medical compositions – interlaced with amusing poetry and anecdotes illustrating the life and character of the physicians.

Written by a man who was himself a medic and a poet, this highly readable history reflects considerable medical experience and lies at the interface of the serious medical practice of the day with society's interest in biography and gossip. A team has now been assembled, with the support of a Wellcome Trust Senior Investigator Award in Medical Humanities, to edit and translate the entire treatise and make it available both to scholars and the general public.

The seminar will take place in the Wellcome Trust, Gibbs Building, 215 Euston Road, NW1 2BE (http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/About-us/Contact-us/Travel-information/index.htm). Doors at 6pm prompt, seminar will start at 6.15.

The Eighth Cambridge Wellcome Lecture in the History of Medicine

Maaike van der Lugt (Université Paris Diderot – Paris 7 / Institut Universitaire de France)

"Generatio: medieval debates about procreation, heredity and 'bioethics'"

Thursday 17 January 2013, 4.30pm
Department of History and Philosophy of Science Free School Lane, Cambridge CB2 3RH

In medieval debates, the idea that the mixture of substances provided by parents determines the appearance and sex of the child coexisted, without contradiction, with the conviction that environmental and behavioural factors also play an important part. Even though the scholastics invented the concept of hereditary disease, distinctions now common between heredity and development, between the acquired and the inherited, had only limited relevance. Generatio, not heredity, was the central concept. Generatio wasn't just the stuff of scholastic speculation. As is the case today, debates about the mechanism of conception, the nature of the substances involved, and the development of the seed into a viable human being had larger moral, legal and practical significance. Several of these issues will be addressed in the lecture: whether abortion must be equated with murder, the treatment reserved for 'monstrous' births, and the extent to which there was room, within the medieval concept of generatio, for eugenics.

There will be tea before the lecture, at 4pm, and a drinks reception afterwards, at 6pm.

The same day at 11.30 Dr van der Lugt will lead a workshop discussion of precirculated texts on "The invention of hereditary disease in medieval medicine"

The concept of hereditary disease – which would play a crucial role in modern debates about heredity – is a medieval creation. Taking their cue from Arabic medical treatises, scholastic physicians forged the concept of hereditary disease by transferring the traditional, legal sense of the adjective (related to the transmission of goods) to the biological realm. However, Western physicians went beyond their sources. They developed legal analogies, defined the types of illnesses that are passed on by heredity, and proposed various causal patterns to account for them. The most articulate medieval discussions, which explicitly distinguish between the hereditary and the congenital, date from around 1320. Hereditary disease remained, nevertheless, relatively marginal in later medieval medicine, especially compared to debates about plague; the latter not only challenged dominant theories of disease, like hereditary disease, but also constituted an urgent threat for whole populations.

<Wellcome Lecture 2013>

Wellcome's Collectors

1:00 pm – 2:00 pm on Friday 02 November 2012
at The Royal Society, London

History of science lecture by Ross MacFarlane.

Event details:
Ross MacFarlane is Academic Engagement Officer at the Wellcome Library, London.

Pharmacist, philanthropist – and Fellow of the Royal Society – Sir Henry Wellcome is now widely recognised as one of the most acquisitive of collectors during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. But Wellcome’s collection of historical objects was not the work of one man acting alone. This talk will aim to bring forth from the shadows of his store rooms the men and women who bid, bought, and collected in Wellcome’s name.

Attending this event:
This event is free to attend and open to all. No tickets are required. Doors open at 12:30pm and seats will be allocated on a first-come-first-served basis.

Recorded audio will be available on this page a few days afterwards.

Enquiries: Contact the events team.

Vacancy: Specialist, Medieval and Early Modern Medicine

Job Title: Specialist, Medieval and Early Modern Medicine

Location: London
Closing Date: 21/12/2011
Salary: £35,000

We are a global charitable foundation dedicated to achieving extraordinary improvements in health by supporting the brightest minds.

The Wellcome Library provides insight and information to anyone seeking to understand medicine and its role in society, past and present. We are one of the world's major resources for the study of medical history and we also provide access to a growing collection of contemporary biomedical information resources relating to consumer health, popular science, biomedical ethics and the public understanding of science.

The role of Specialist, Medieval and Early Modern Medicine is key to the future development of the Library's role as one of the world's premier locations for research in the history of early medicine and science. With digitisation plans for the collections being set up, the Wellcome Library is looking for someone who is forward thinking and passionate about the potential for digital technologies to support and enhance scholarly use of early manuscript and printed collections, as well as engage a wider public audience. Reporting directly to the Head of Research and Scholarship, the successful candidate will an established academic historian of medicine or science, with experience of working with early manuscripts and rare books, and of using digital resources for historical research. Candidates should have a higher degree in History with specialisation in pre-modern medicine or science and must be able to demonstrate the following:

• A strong academic profile
• Knowledge of relevant collections, including those outside the Wellcome Library
• Knowledge of current academic work in fields relevant to the Library's pre-modern collections
• Excellent communication skills, both written and oral, including the ability to engage non-specialist audiences
• Strong influencing and persuading skills
• Good networking skills
• An aptitude for collaboration and team-working
• A reading knowledge of Latin and at least one other relevant foreign language

Salary c. £35000 p.a (depending on experience) plus excellent benefits Closing date for applications: 21 December 2011 Interviews : w/c 23 January 2012

Phoebe Harkins
Assistant Librarian, Discovery & Engagement Wellcome Library The Wellcome Trust
183 Euston Road
London NW1 2BE
Tel: +44 (0) 20 7611 8628
Mob:+44 (0) 7739 194907
Fax: +44 (0) 20 7611 8369

The Wellcome Trust is a charity registered in England, no. 210183. Its sole trustee is The Wellcome Trust Limited, a company registered in England, no. 2711000, whose registered office is at 215 Euston Road, London NW1 2BE, UK.

Vacancy Details
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