Paul Wenzel Geissler
Before Geissler studied social anthropology at the universities of Copenhagen and Cambridge (PhD 2003), he studied Zoology in Hamburg and Copenhagen (PhD 1998), and conducted field research in medical parasitology in East Africa. His doctoral fieldworks for both disciplines was conducted in Kenya, between 1994 and 2002, and most of his work remains focused on Africa, especially its Eastern parts. After converting from biomedical science to anthropology, Geissler at first shifted his field of research away from medical issues towards broader anthropological themes such as kinship and generation, social change, history and memory. Based on extensive fieldwork among Luo speaking people in the western part of Kenya, he wrote, together with Ruth Prince, the monograph 'The Land is Dying - Contingency, Creativity and Conflict in Western Kenya' (2010 RAI Amaury Talbot Prize for best Africanist book).
Geissler then returned to medical science (and to East Africa) through a series of ethnographic studies of bioscientific research stations and fieldwork (2004-2010). In this work on the social life of clinical trials and transnational scientific collaboration, he worked together with other anthropologists and in particular historians of post-colonial science (see africanbiosciences.wordpress.com); together, this group worked over the past decade at bringing together ethnographic and historical perspectives on science in Africa.
During recent years, Geissler has, together with colleagues, turned his attention to post-colonial bioscientific work in Africa, and in particular the intersection of material remains and traces - landscape, architecture, apparatus, spatial order and circulations - and memory and temporality, notably the sedimentation of 'past futures' of modernist scientific work in Africa, in its institutions, landscapes, and infrastructure. For this research, much of his fieldwork was carried out at Amani Research station in northern Tanzania, as well as in Kisumu, Kenya.
Geissler's interest in scientific fieldwork, and field stations has more recently taken him to the far North, away from obvious post-colonial preoccupations (which return in other ways, though), to the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard. Since 2013, he has conducted several shorter fieldwork periods here, participating in research activities - taking particular interest in ornithology - as well as, in winter, kitchen work at this highly productive Arctic research station. In this fieldwork, affective dimensions of scientific production, and engagements with landscape and climate over long periods of time, emerged as first research interests.
Over the coming years, Geissler hopes to develop comparative perspectives on tropical and arctic field sciences, continuing to pursue the trace and the work of tracing in relation to the making and remaking of temporality. Rather than straightforward 'social studies of science', from which Geissler like other anthropologists takes inspiration, he seeks to develop the fruitful terrain between anthropology, history and related disciplines such as contemporary archaeology and geography.
Geissler then returned to medical science (and to East Africa) through a series of ethnographic studies of bioscientific research stations and fieldwork (2004-2010). In this work on the social life of clinical trials and transnational scientific collaboration, he worked together with other anthropologists and in particular historians of post-colonial science (see africanbiosciences.wordpress.com); together, this group worked over the past decade at bringing together ethnographic and historical perspectives on science in Africa.
During recent years, Geissler has, together with colleagues, turned his attention to post-colonial bioscientific work in Africa, and in particular the intersection of material remains and traces - landscape, architecture, apparatus, spatial order and circulations - and memory and temporality, notably the sedimentation of 'past futures' of modernist scientific work in Africa, in its institutions, landscapes, and infrastructure. For this research, much of his fieldwork was carried out at Amani Research station in northern Tanzania, as well as in Kisumu, Kenya.
Geissler's interest in scientific fieldwork, and field stations has more recently taken him to the far North, away from obvious post-colonial preoccupations (which return in other ways, though), to the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard. Since 2013, he has conducted several shorter fieldwork periods here, participating in research activities - taking particular interest in ornithology - as well as, in winter, kitchen work at this highly productive Arctic research station. In this fieldwork, affective dimensions of scientific production, and engagements with landscape and climate over long periods of time, emerged as first research interests.
Over the coming years, Geissler hopes to develop comparative perspectives on tropical and arctic field sciences, continuing to pursue the trace and the work of tracing in relation to the making and remaking of temporality. Rather than straightforward 'social studies of science', from which Geissler like other anthropologists takes inspiration, he seeks to develop the fruitful terrain between anthropology, history and related disciplines such as contemporary archaeology and geography.
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Papers by Paul Wenzel Geissler
This book is about the afterlife of scientific institutions and practices, and the “aftertime” of scientific modernity, with its attendant visions of progress and transformation, and especially the role played by science and scientists in Africa – before and after decolonisation.
Combining academic writing with experimental approaches
to fieldwork and enquiry, and including a rich photographic archive, interview fragments, short reflective essays, published text and researcher’s field notes, the nineteen international scholars and artists who contributed to this highly original, visual and interdisciplinary book take us on a journey through the ruins, traces and past futures of medical science in Africa – shedding new light on the post-colonial past and African present.
Drawing on ethnographic and historical research and artistic
interventions, Traces of the Future: An Archaeology of Medical
Science in Africa explores the vestiges of five iconic 20th century
sites of medical science across Africa in Senegal, Nigeria,
Cameroon, Kenya and Tanzania.
This book is about the afterlife of scientific institutions and
practices, and the “aftertime” of scientific modernity, with its
attendant visions of progress and transformation, and especially
the role played by science and scientists in Africa – before and
after decolonisation.
Combining academic writing with experimental approaches
to fieldwork and enquiry, and including a rich photographic
archive, interview fragments, short reflective essays, published
text, researcher’s field notes, and original artwork by Mariele
Neudecker and Evgenia Arbugaeva, the nineteen international
scholars and artists who contributed to this highly original,
visual and interdisciplinary book take us on a journey through
the ruins, traces and past futures of medical science in Africa –
shedding new light on the post-colonial past and African present.