Pauline Dirven wins Stichting Praemium Erasmianum Research Prize

Pauline Dirven received a Research Prize from the Stichting Praemium Erasmianum for her dissertation Embodied Performances of Forensic Expertise: Epistemic Virtues, Gender, and Emotions in British Forensic Culture 1920–1980.

Her research examines how forensic scientists, physicians, and pathologists performed as expert personae in the British criminal justice system over the period from 1920 to 1980, and specifically, what epistemic virtues they embodied to enact this. The thesis follows the perspective of historians who study scholarly personae and argue that ideas about what it meant to be a forensic expert were not only shaped by the academic disciplines in which they worked but also by gender, class, and nationalist norms.

The dissertation was written at Utrecht University, Faculty of Humanities, Department of History and Art History, section Cultural History. It was supervised by Prof. Dr. Willemijn Ruberg and Dr. Jochen Hung. The full text and abstract are available in the Utrecht University Repository.

Congratulations Pauline!