About the Department of Medical Ethics and History of Medicine
The Department of Medical Ethics and History of Medicine views medicine as a practice that has evolved historically and is shaped by culture. It examines the interactions between medicine, society, and politics from an interdisciplinary perspective. The Department was founded in 1983 by Professor Ulrich Tröhler, a medical historian, who served as its director until 1994. From 1998 to 2024, Professor Claudia Wiesemann, a medical historian and ethicist, served as the Departments director. In 2025, Professor Silke Schicktanz, who previously led the Cultural and Ethical Studies of Biomedicine research group, took over as director.
Department Director
Prof. Dr. Silke Schicktanz has been Director of the Department of Medical Ethics and History of Medicine at the University Medical Center Göttingen since 2025. After holding academic positions in Tübingen, at the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine in Berlin, and at the University of Münster, she became an assistant professor in 2006 and a full professor of Culture and Ethics in Biomedicine at the University of Göttingen in 2010. Her international research stays have taken her to Berkeley and San Francisco, as well as to Delhi, Tel Aviv, and Montreal, among other places.
Our Team
Our team is interdisciplinary in nature and brings together researchers from bioethics, philosophy, sociology, political science and cultural studies, history, education, the life sciences, and medicine. This diversity of disciplines forms the foundation of our work: Different methodological and theoretical approaches enable us to critically analyze the relationship between medicine, sociotechnical developments, and political contexts. Our research operates at the intersection of empirical-social analysis, normative justification, conceptual analysis, and social reflection.
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