Sophia Wagemann
researcher staffCharité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin
Thielallee 71
14195 Berlin
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Expertise
Sophia Wagemann joined the Institute for History of Medicine and Ethics in Medicine at Charité in April 2023 as a research associate. She is currently involved in the research project "Risky Hormones" / "Risky Hormones, pregnant patients and the contested science of birth defects: the rise and fall of hormone pregnancy tests in the FRG and UK, 1950-81" (DFG/AHRC). Since October 2023 she is also a research associate in the research area "Global Health" at the University of Leipzig and is doing her PhD on the history of the contraceptive pill and its side effects in the Graduate School Global and Area Studies Leipzig.
Current research project
The PhD project deals with the history of hormonal contraception in the GDR and the FRG 1961-1990. The project investigates how side effects of the contraceptive pill were described, discussed, justified and communicated to users:inside. This includes sources from pharmaceutical companies, gynecological literature, package inserts, and selected magazine and newspaper articles. Central to the analysis is how concepts of the body, the concept of side effects, and hormonal effects are related. This approach shows how the discussion about the pill has changed the concept of side effects itself. T
he aim of this work is thus both to trace the continuities of gender-related explanations of side effects and to highlight the birth control pill in the context of discourses on drug safety after the incision of the thalidomide scandal.
Research focus
History of side effects in gynecology
History of drug safety and risk communication
History of hormones and reproductive medicine
Holistic discourses in German-speaking medicine after 1945
Gender and body history
Selected publications
Wagemann, S. (2021) „Veränderungen des Geschlechtstriebs“ als Nebenwirkung in den Packungsbeilagen der Pille. In: Bühner/Rinner/Tammer/Töpfer (Hg.), Sexualitäten sammeln: Ansprüche und Widersprüche im Museum, Wien/Köln: Böhlau Verlag.
Wagemann, S., Hopfgarten, C. (2021) Making Race and Health in Migration and Development, 03.06.2021 – 04.06.2021 digital (Leipzig). In: H-Soz-Kult, 09.08.2021, www.hsozkult.de/conferencereport/id/tagungsberichte- 9011.
Wagemann, S. (2021) Rezension zu: Rosenwein, Barbara H.: Anger. The Conflicted History of an Emotion. New Haven 2020. ISBN 978-0-300-22142-8. In: H-Soz-Kult, 25.02.2021, www.hsozkult.de/publicationreview/id/reb-50062.
Vita Sophia Wagemann
Sophia Wagemann studied ethnology at the University of Leipzig. From 2019 to 2021, she worked as a supervisor for the tutor:in qualification of medical students at the Medical Faculty of Leipzig. She received the pre-doctoral fellowship of the Graduate School of Global and Area Studies.This was followed by a Landesgraduiertenstipendium Sachsen from 2020-2023 and teaching positions in Comparative Cultural and Social History Leipzig. Under an ARQUS mobility grant, she spent two months as a Visiting Researcher at the Department of Anatomical Pathology and History of Science at the University of Granada (Spain). Currently, Sophia Wagemann is a research associate in the Risky Hormones project at the Charité in Berlin and in the Global Health research group at the University of Leipzig.