Marianne Sommer

CV

Marianne Sommer studied Biology and English Linguistics and Literature at the Universities of Zurich and Coventry (GB). In her dissertation (Foremost in Creation, 2000) on the construction of what it means to be human in the history of primatology within the area of tension between science, the media, and the public, she used a discourse analytical approach to investigate the motivations for and effects of anthropomorphisms in National Geographic articles on non-human primates (1888-1998). She finished her PhD thesis during her time as graduate student at the Collegium Helveticum of the Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich, where she had the opportunity to deepen her understanding of the history and social studies of science. Subsequently she took part in a KIRA Summer School at the University of Amherst on the subject of 'Science and Other Ways of Knowing'. She then spent two years as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Max-Planck-Institute for the History of Science in Berlin, where she co-organized the Summer Academy 2002 on 'Human Origins'. It was also at the Max-Planck-Institute that she began to work on her project, the biography of a scientific object (skeleton) in the history of anthropology. From there she went to Pennsylvania State University, where she spent another two years as Postdoctoral Fellow in the Science, Medicine and Technology in Culture Program, headed by Londa Schiebinger and Robert Proctor. At Penn State, where she was also Visiting Scholar of the STS Department, she taught undergraduate and graduate courses in the history of science and in science studies. Since January 2004, she is working at the chair for science studies of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, during which time, in Spring 2006, she has also been a visiting fellow at Stanford University. In 2007, she has finished her Habilitation and received the venia legendi for the history of science and science studies at the ETH Zurich (Bones and Ochre, Harvard University Press, 2007). Her new project carries the working title 'History Within: The Phylogenetic Memory of Bones, Organisms, and Molecules'. Since January 2010 she is SNSF Professor for the History of Science and Science Studies at the University of Zurich. She is also a PD at D-GESS, ETH Zurich.