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Science and technology are the fundamental driving forces behind modernisation and innovation. Since its very beginnings, modern medicine has stood in close relation to technical innovation. Advances in medicine are unthinkable without continual progress in gaining new scientific insights/knowledge and without the development of new technical procedures. At the same time, science and technology continually instigate – often because of their incontrovertible and indispensable successes – questions and conflicts concerning potential consequential impacts.
With the development of medical biotechnology, not only are we once again experiencing another innovations boom in medical research, but also in clinical practice. Besides the ethical considerations that have already been publicly debated on a large scale in the natural and social sciences, the innovations boom also gives rise to questions concerning (up until now rather unnoticed) changes in the daily practice of medicine, the doctor-patient relationship and social patterns of interpretation of health, sickness, subjectivity and physicality while also vice versa, new discourses are creating these social patterns of interpretation. One thinks of interest groups, which are actively working under the motto of public and private healthcare in Public-Health-Genetics or research with bio-banks. Here is where (or at least one can assume) the model of legitimating and guiding principles for advances in technology are generated and tested in social communication.
Hence we assume that a complex interplay is taking place between technological innovation and social legitimation, marked by a cause and effect relationship in both directions. The doctorate focus programme in biomedicine takes both aspects of this interplay into consideration. The hypothesis is that these social patterns of interpretation and technologies emerge through a tight social co-production and therefore, cannot be studied separately.
Not only issues of ethics, but also questions concerning the political and legal regulation within the context of technology genesis and impact, arise out of this interplay between technology innovation and social patterns of interpretation.
These far-reaching and future-relevant questions stand before a backdrop of an elaborate ethics debate on the one hand and an established interdisciplinary science and technology research on the other hand. The concept behind the doctorate programme focus in biomedicine builds on both established traditions and continues with the advancement of biomedicine while taking into account new problem areas. It is based on the observation that currently a diffusion of technology in daily medical practice is taking place from which the hypothesis is drawn that as a result new questions are being raised that go beyond the already wide-ranging ethics debate. These questions, which seem perhaps at first small scale, may have potentially far-reaching consequences on our daily lives / may potentially produce far-reaching changes to our daily lives. Five possible dissertation topics arise from this approach:
1. Perfecting Human Traits and Abilities
2. Change in the Understanding of Sickness and Health
3. Public Legitimation and Technology Innovation
4. Profession and Professionalism
5. Social Justice and Political Regulation
The doctorate focus deals with these complex questions in a tightly linked – modelled in the direction of a post-graduate program – co-operation between the doctoral candidates under continuous advisement. Within this outlined subject area, there are many possible fields of work for a dissertation. The following list offers only some guiding suggestions:
You are welcome to suggest additional topics, which have not been listed. A comprehensive description of the doctorate programme can be downloaded here: (PDF)
Before applying to the doctorate programme, please contact one of the programme advisors for further assistance.
Financial Assistance
