VivaMente Grantees

VivaMente Grantees

2020

Fabrizio Baldassarri

University of Bucharest

Medicine in the Philosophy of Descartes

Lights and Shadows

Fabrizio Baldassarri defended a PhD thesis in Descartes’ naturalistic studies in 2013, especially focusing on a Cartesian natural history embedded within his natural philosophy. He has recently been aiming attention at Descartes’ botanical studies as they emerged in Descartes’ correspondence and in his under-studied manuscripts. Additionally, Baldassarri’s thread of research are directed towards (1.) the comprehension of the relationship method-experimentation in Descartes; (2.) the understanding of Descartes’ theory of matter; (3.) the redefinition of Descartes’ sciences of life and of a few aspects of his medicine, physiology and therapeutics. Baldassarri has published on all these subjects, and he is now looking at the relationships Descartes’ had with his scientific studies.

2022

Jil Muller

University of Paderborn

From Automata to Transhumans

Debating Human Nature and its Limitations 1600-2000

Jil Muller is Deputy Head of the Center for the History of Women Philosophers and Scientists, in Paderborn, Germany, and Assistant Professor of Philosophy. Her research especially focuses on French Women Philosophers and Scientists in the early modern period and she is mainly concerned with their moral theories and their understanding of man in society. She is also interested in the religious themes discussed in philosophy, such as the newly discussed proofs of the existence of God. She received her PhD at the University of Strasbourg, with a dissertation on Montaigne, Descartes and the question of original sin. in 2022 she published her book Soigner le corps humain. Péchés et remèdes chez Montaigne et Descartes with Classiques Garnier.

2023

Catherine Rider and Sarah Toulalan

University of Exeter

Fertility, Medicine and the Body

Theory and Practice across the Premodern World

Catherine Rider is an Associate Professor in Medieval History at the University of Exeter. She is interested in the religious and cultural history of Europe in the late Middle Ages. Her research to date has focused predominantly on the history of magic and the church’s attitude to magic, with volumes such as Magic and Religion in Medieval England (2012) and the co-edited volume, with Sophie Page, Routledge History of Medieval Magic (2019). Sarah Toulalan is also an Associate Professor at Exeter and her research area covers topics such as the history of the body, with particular interests in gender, sex, sexuality, ageing, and body size. She is currently finishing writing a book on ‘Children and sex in early modern England: knowledge, consent, abuse c.1550-1750’ generously funded by a Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship.

2024

Daniel King and Nephele Papakonstantinou

University of Exeter – University of Würzburg

‘Narratio’ in Medicine and the Law

Interpretative and Scientific Knowledge in Medico-Legal Case History, from Antiquity to the Renaissance.

Nephele Papakonstantinou is currently an Alexander von Humboldt Post-doctoral Research Fellow at the Institut für Klassische Philologie at the University of Würzburg with a project on normative constructions of iniuria under the Late Roman Republic and Early Empire. She has taught a wide range of subjects of Latin literature, mainly at the University of Athens. An expert in imperial Greek culture and literature from the late 1st century AD to the mid-fourth, Daniel King is Associate Professor and Leventis Associate Professor in the Impact of Greek Culture at the University of Exeter. His research spans the history of the body, gender construction, emotions, medicine, and science. Notably, he has explored the construction of distress in imperial culture and the experience of pain in Greek culture.