Ph.D. scholarship on the material history of blindness (Medical Museion, University of Copenhagen)

A three-year Ph.D. scholarship has been announced at Medical Museion,
Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Copenhagen. The scholarship is
part of the research project ‘Vision and touch: a material history of the
world of blindness’, which deals with the history of blindness and its
intricate relation to vision, representation, touch and physical objects.

The aim of the project is to study the history of blindness from a material
culture perspective. This will be done through the use of Medical Museion’s
historical collection of artefacts related to visual impairment. Objects
such as three-dimensional maps, choral books in Braille and palpable models
of famous statues and buildings, point in a very concrete way to a world in
which vision has ceased to prevail. Besides bearing witness of the daily
routines at the medical and pedagogical institutions for the blind, the
material heritage of blindness stresses the cultural tension in contemporary
Western society between vision in all its abundant technologies and touch as
a socially restrained mode of experience.

The project combines a historical viewpoint with a museum studies approach.
The Ph.D.-part of the project can, for instance, relate to questions
concerning blindness and the cultural history of the senses and blindness,
artefacts and touch from the perspective of museum studies.

The formal announcement can be found
here.
Deadline for applications is 1 September 2011. For further information
contact Jan Eric Olsén, jeon@sund.ku.dk.