Dr Staffan Müller-Wille
Extension: 5134
Telephone: 01392 725134
Senior Lecturer
I am currently on research leave at the Max Planck Institute for the \History of Science in Berlin. Please contact me by e-mail.
For a full CV click here; for a full publication list here.
Staffan received his academic education at the universities of Kiel, Berlin (West) and Bielefeld. He held a research position at the Max Planck Institute for History of Science (Berlin) before he moved to the University of Exeter in 2004. He currently holds a joint position as lecturer in both the Department of Sociology and Philosophy and the Department of History, and is associated with the ESRC Centre for Genomics in Society (Egenis) and the Centre for Medical History at the University of Exeter.
Staffan's research is strongly interdisciplinary, moving back and forth between the history, philosophy and social studies of the life sciences. He has published extensively on the history of taxonomy, with a focus on the work of the eighteenth-century Swedish naturalist Carolus Linnaeus, and on the history of the concepts of heredity, gene, and race. Recent publications include:
- Part Special Issue "Historical and Philosophical Perspectives on Cell Biology", guest-edited with Maureen O'Malley for Studiesn in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Studies;
- Das Gen im Zeitalter der Postgenomik: Eine wissenschaftshistorische Bestandsaufnahme (Suhrkamp, edition unseld, 2009), a book co-authored with Hans-Jörg Rheinberger on the evolution of the gene concept; an English translation is currently being negotiated with Yale University Press;
- Vererbung: Geschichte und Kultur eines biologischen Konzepts (Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 2009), a book co-authored with Hans-Jörg Rheinberger on the history and culture of the concept of heredity; an English translation is in press with University of Chicago Press;
- Musa cliffortiana/Cliffords Banana Plant (IAPT, 2007), an edition of a book published by Linnaeus in 1737; and
- Heredity Produced: At the Crossroads of Biology, Politics, and Culture 1500-1870 (MIT Press, 2007), an essay volume co-edited with Hans-Jörg Rheinberger.
Staffan is a Fellow of the Linnean Society of London.
Research Projects:
A Cultural History of Heredity (funded by the Karl-Schaedler Foundation)
Re-Writing the System of Nature: Linnaeus's Use of Writing Technologies (Funded by the Wellcome Trust)
