Prof. Dr. Veronika Lipphardt
Veronika Lipphardt is professor in Science and Technology Studies. Her current research includes Genetic History and Population Genetics today. Furthermore, she is interested in the role of narratives and interpretations in the life sciences, in narratives of economic growth in public and academic discourses, in the relationship between academia and the media, as well as in responsibility in academia.
- since 2015: Professor in Science and Technology Studies, University College Freiburg
- 2011–2015: Free University Berlin: Associate Professor for History of Science
- 2009–2015: Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin: Research Group Director, Group Project: Twentieth Century Histories Of Knowledge About Human Variation“
- Europe’s Roma people are vulnerable to poor practice in genetics (with M. Surdu, N. Ellebrecht, P. Pfaffelhuber, M. Wienroth, G. Rappold), in: Nature 599 (2021), pp. 368–371.
- Ethics as Lived Practice. Anticipatory Capacity and Ethical Decision-Making in Forensic Genetics (with M. Wienroth. R. Granja, E. Nsiah Amoako, C. McCartney), in Genes 12 (12) (2021).
- How to choose sets of ancestry informative markers: A supervised feature selection approach (with P. Pfaffelhuber, F. Grundner –Culemann, F. Baumdicker), in: Forensic Science International: Genetics 46 (2020), https://www.fsigenetics.com/article/S1872-4973(20)30030-2/pdf.
- Responsible Research? Dilemmata der Integration gesellschaftlicher und kultureller Perspektiven in naturwissenschaftliche Forschungsprogramme (Einleitung) (with C. Borck, S. Maasen, R. Müller, M. Penkler), in: Special Issue, Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte 41(3) (2018), pp. 215–221.
- Health and Difference. Rendering Human Variation in Colonial Engagements (eds. V. Lipphardt / A. Widmer), Series ‘Biosocial Societies’, Berghahn Books, 2016.
- Visibility matters: Diagrammatic renderings of human evolution and diversity in physical, serological and molecular anthropology (eds. M. Sommer / V. Lipphardt), Special Issue of History of the Human Sciences 28(5), 2015.
- “Geographical Distribution Patterns of Various Genes”: Genetic Studies of Human Variation after 1945, in: Studies in the History and Philosophy of the Biological and Biomedical Sciences 47(A) (2014), pp. 50–61.
Veronika Lipphardt’s research interests include the history of life sciences and physical anthropology as well as the sociology and anthropology of knowledge. In recent years, her scientific work has focused in particular on forensic DNA analysis and genetic studies on vulnerable populations, in particular Roma.
Veronika Lipphardt’s teaching emphasizes building students’ understanding of the interrelationships among science, technology, knowledge and society, with a focus not only on how science and technology are made by people through intricate social and cultural practices, but also on the ways that the science and technology we make in turn influences us.
She teaches a variety of courses that introduce students to the social study of knowledge, science, and technology, as well as courses that delve deeply into particular thematic areas. All of the courses emphasize scholarship as an active undertaking, and include methodological instruction and research projects.