About

Vaccines and vaccination raise complex questions around polices, practices, and people. Protecting and promoting health through vaccination always also involves areas of tensions, contention and intense negotiation: interests of the elderly vs. young; individual life/health vs. notions of a “healthy” society; societal engagement with well-being vs. death and dying; vaccine production and use for individuals vs. public health; body vs. biopolitics; tension between knowledge production in the laboratory vs. implementation; tension between scientificity (Wissenschaftlichkeit) and the personal assessment of scientists.

This Innovative Training Network aims to explore past, present and emerging “Regimes of Remembering”, “Regimes of Knowing”, “Regimes of Doing” and “Regimes of Living” by focusing on historical, scientific, cultural, and political negotiating processes. “How should one live” is taken as a starting point for an investigation into global and societal negotiations of different actors and agencies. It takes a multi-disciplinary approach to the subject of vaccines to ensure meaningful dialogue between humanities, social, medical and natural sciencs. The integrated research fields offer important perspectives on the subject of vaccines and reflect key methodological approaches in the medical humanities.