Eva Åhrén

Eva Åhrén

Operations Director
Telephone: +46852486245
Visiting address: Annerovägen 12, 16970 Solna
Postal address: GVS Gemensamt verksamhetsstöd, GVS Medicinens historia och kulturarv, 171 77 Stockholm
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About me

  • I am Operations Director the Hagströmer Medico-Historical Library and KI
    Medical History and Heritage, which is a section in the President’s Office.
    Our mission is twofold:
    * To preserve, develop and make KI:s heritage collections available to
    scholars, students and the general public.
    * To research and communicate KI:s history, within a larger context of the
    history of medicine, healthcare and the life sciences.
    The collections in our care consist of older books and periodicals,
    manuscripts, photographs, art prints, scientific instruments and
    preparations, and KI:s art collection. The section consists of two units: the
    Hagströmer Library, and Research and Collections. We are currently located
    in the old Haga Courthouse, but we are preparing to move to Campus Solna in
    2022.
    I am also in charge of the effort to integrate culture and science at KI, a
    mission related to KI:s Strategy 2030. I am a member of KI:s Culture Council
    and a leader of the research team in History of Science and Medicine, which
    is a part o Center for Healthcare Ethics at LIME. Our research deals with
    medical and scientific history in Stockholm from the sixteenth century until
    now, within national and global contexts. KI, and its predecessor Collegium
    Medicum, have played prominent parts in this history.
    In 2002 I received my PhD from the cross-disciplinary research department
    Health and Society at Linköping University. Since then, I have taught
    cultural history and history of medicine
  • conducted research in the history
    of medicine and science
  • and worked as Senior Curator and Head of Research at
    the Nobel Museum in Stockholm (2003-2007).
    MA, History of Science and Ideas, Stockholm University, 1994
    PhD, Program in Heatlh and Society, Linköping University, 2002
    Postdoc, History of Medicine, Yale University, 2005-2006

Research

  • My own research focuses on materiality, visuality and epistemology in
    nineteenth-century life science and Karolinska Institutet. For example, I
    study the role of specimen preparations and museum work for knowledge
    production
  • the impact of scientific networks on research and education
  • the
    development and use of visual media (e. g. drawings, prints, photography, and
    models) and mediations in research and education. One of my research projects
    deals with the creation and use of wax moulages (cast models of body parts
    with skin and venereal disease) at KI and its teaching clinics.
    Before I came to KI in 2013, I was Researcher at the U. S. National
    Institutes of Health (NIH), studying early bacteriology and NIH history.
    During the years 2007-2010, I had a research project at Uppsala University,
    funded by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond for the Advancment of the Humanities and
    Social Sciences. This project dealt with KI’s nineteenth-century museums of
    Anatomy, Pathology, Pharmacology, Forensic medicine and more.

Articles

All other publications

Employments

  • Operations Director, Central Administration, Karolinska Institutet, 2024-
  • Operations Director, Department of Learning, Informatics, Management and Ethics, Karolinska Institutet, 2023-2026

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