Thomas Söderqvist

Museumschef Emeritus, professor

ths@sund.ku.dk |

I stepped down as director of Medical Museion in 2015, and as professor by October 1, 2016. Now I am emeritus professor.

MY 15+ YEARS AS DIRECTOR (1999-2015)

I came to the University of Copenhagen as professor in history of medicine in 1999. Asked to take the responsibility of the university’s medical collections, I worked out the concept for a new kind of museum institution, which emphasised the integration of research, experimental exhibition making, and curatorship. In 2004 the project officially got its current name, Medical Museion.

As the first (founding) director of Medical Museion, I was responsible for everything: research and teaching, exhibitions, events, acquisitions, web outreach, etc. (but not conservation).

Thanks to generous grants from the Novo Nordisk Foundation, I was able to hire a growing number of PhD-students, postdocs/assistant professors and curators.

I have also had the pleasure to produce and curate several exhibitions and art installations, including Primary Substances, Healthy Ageing, An Ageing World, and Genomic Enlightenment.

MY EARLIER CAREER (1965-1999)

My undergraduate academic training at the University of Stockholm in zoology, chemistry and paleontology was followed by postgraduate work in philosophy of science and history of science at the University of Umeå and the University of Gothenburg. I earned my PhD in ‘theory of science’ (Swedish ‘vetenskapsteori’) from the University of Gothenburg in 1986.

I got my first job as lecturer at the University of Roskilde, and taught history and philosophy of biology and science studies for more than 25 years. In the late 1990s I had a 5-year research professorship in science studies.

PUBLICATIONS

I have a long track record of academic publications in history of 20th century ecology, history of 20th century immunology, historiography of contemporary science, biographical methodology, research ethics (virtue ethics) and science museology, and have also produced a fairly large number of popular writings. Most of my publications after 2005 are also listed in the University of Copenhagen publication database.

SOCIAL MEDIA OUTPUT

In 2005, I started a blog called Biomedicine on Display to encourage discussions about medical museology, and over the last ten years I have written more than 1000 blogposts; in 2011 the blog was merged with Medical Museion’s website (www.museion.ku.dk).

I have also spent much time and energy to contribute to the international museological discussion by writing >5000 tweets under the name of @museionist.

CURRENT INTERESTS

My current research interest is quite different from anything I have done before. I am now working on a project called ‘The Ageing Professor”. In short, I’m using my own career as a case to better understand the ageing academic. Read more on my independent website www.canities.dk, or follow frequent postings on my Facebok profile, and my twitter account @AgeingProfessor.

MORE …

For details about my academic career, see this short autobiography, or read this biographical interview, or my curriculum vitae.

Creating life: from alchemy to synthetic biology

Thomas Söderqvist

One of the things I’ve learned from the history of science during my academic career is that the historicist critique of presentism — that is, the critique that says that historical actors and events shall be interpreted in terms of their own time horizon and not from the vantage point of the present — is […]

december 25, 2012

De udviklingshæmmedes, børnehjemsbørnenes og de sindslidendes historie i perioden 1945-1976

Thomas Söderqvist

En af Medicinsk Museions mangeårige medarbejdere, lektor Jesper Vaczy Kragh, har fået en to-årig bevilling fra Socialstyrelsen til et socialhistorisk projekt som skal kikke på de udviklingshæmmedes, børnehjemsbørns og sindslidendes historie i perioden 1945-1976. Projektet, som er et samarbejde med Svendborg Museum og Syddansk Universitets Center for Velfærdsforskning, er tilkommet efter at Kristeligt Dagblad satte fingeren på […]

december 7, 2012

Ambient plasticity: aesthetics of the hospital

Thomas Söderqvist

One of our PhD-students, Anette Stenslund, is currently visiting researcher at the Centre for Sensory Studies, Concordia University, Montreal. Under the heading “Ambient plasticity: aesthetics of the hospital”, she investigates everyday aesthetics and is currently exploring the atmosphere of the hospital by emphasizing smell impressions: To most people, the hospital smell is unpleasant and uncomfortable: Why […]

december 7, 2012

Mannequins in museums — their present use, aesthetic reactions and history

Thomas Söderqvist

Until recently I thought the use of mannequins in museums was an almost extinct species of exhibition design. We removed the last mannequins from Medical Museion’s public exhibitions more than a decade ago and have only kept two of them in the staff area for the fun of scaring the shit out of new employees […]

december 2, 2012

Is collecting contemporary historical objects a ‘risky business’?

Thomas Söderqvist

Steven Lubar — director of the public humanities programme at Brown University and keen observer of things museological — has just drawn his Twitter followers’ attention to a “nice” blog post on the problems of collecting contemporary artefacts written by National Museum of American History curator Carlene Stephens. Stephens’ blog post revolves around Stanley (a driver-less vehicle that won a historic […]

november 19, 2012

Caterina Albano on Fear and Art in the Contemporary World — a good topic for a medical exhibition

Thomas Söderqvist

Caterina Albano is one of those interesting combined scholars-curators, who works on topics that any medical museum director would love to include in the portfolio. Having a PhD background in Renaissance Studies, Albano focuses her research and curatorial work on projects that relate bioscience, art and culture and explore topics like the unconscious, the history […]

november 14, 2012

Hvorfor spørge to kolleger – når du kan spørge 2000?

Thomas Söderqvist

Sidste nummer af Ugeskrift for Læger indholder et journalistisk referat af det seminar om sociale medier og medicin, som vi har fortalt om tidligere. Der var indledninger ved Richard Smith, tidligere chefredaktør for British Medical Journal (BMJ), som er aktiv fortaler for ”open access publishing” og meget aktiv bruger af sociale medier (www.blogs.bmj.com), og læge Bertalan Meskó, der er […]

november 8, 2012

Sandra Dudley is giving a seminar on object-centred work in museums (Copenhagen, Thursday 15 November)

Thomas Söderqvist

On next Thursday, 15 November, museum and material culture scholar Sandra Dudley will speak about “The possibilities of things: an object-centred view and its implications for museums” at Medical Museion’s MUSE-seminar (abstract below). Sandra Dudley has a background in anthropology, she has been, among other places, at the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford and the Smithsonian in Washington DC, before coming […]

november 8, 2012

Cross-fertilisation between sci comm and STS

Thomas Söderqvist

The Canadian Journal of Communication is planning a special issue on possible cross-fertilisations between communication studies and science and technology studies (STS). Very interesting for us here at Medical Museion because many of us work at the crossroads of medical humanities, science communication and science and technology studies. As the editors of the special issue say […]

november 1, 2012

Putting the magic back into medicine

Thomas Söderqvist

Just learned from a job ad on the UKMCG-list that the Thackray Medical Museum in Leeds is launching a new research and curatorial project titled “Putting the Magic Back into Medicine”. The project, which is funded by Arts Council England, is meant to lay the foundations for transforming the Thackray Museum’s identity by, as they put […]

oktober 31, 2012

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