Centre for the Study of Health, Ethics, and Society founded“History research should have societal value.”

30 May 2023, by Newsroom editorial office

Photo: University of Kent

Ulf Schmidt has been a nucleus professor at Universität Hamburg—University of Excellence since 2020. With this professorship, the University drives the development of core research areas.

The Centre for the Study of Health, Ethics, and Society was recently founded in the Faculty of Humanities. It fosters transdisciplinary cooperation in the areas of health, ethics, and society and will be headed by the nucleus professor Ulf Schmidt.

Research and cooperative projects at the Centre for the Study of Health, Ethics, and Society (CHES) focus on academic research and teaching in the field of twentieth and twenty-first century history. Research focuses especially on the history of medicine, science and ethics, and aspects of politics, culture, and law which, thanks to their complex interactions, impact the lives and experiences of people and institutions beyond national borders.

“We think that history research should have societal value. This is why we work with academic and non-academic organizations all over the world for publications, conferences, and exhibitions—to make top research accessible to experts and the general public,” explains Ulf Schmidt, professor of modern history and the center’s founder.  

CHES also forms the institutional foundation for Professor Schmidt’s ERC Synergy Grant project, Taming the European Leviathan, in which principal investigators from the Charité—Universitätsmedizin Berlin, the Central University, and the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences are taking part.

The center has curated an online exhibition (a “digitorial”) for children in cooperation with the illustrator of the Gruffelo, Axel Scheffler, on corona and also spearheads exhibition projects on the relationship between health and society in cooperation with the Hochschule für bildende Künste Hamburg (Hamburg University of Fine Arts). Currently, the center is developing further interdisciplinary projects with the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, the Centre for Structural Systems Biology, and the Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society. In June 2023, the center hosted the conference Beyond Binaries: Gender and Medicine in Post-War Europe as part of the ERC Taming the European Leviathan project.

Schmidt’s nucleus professorship was made possible thanks to funding from the Excellence Strategy of the Federal and State Governments and the University’s status as a University of Excellence.