Caroline Schep
PhD candidate
- Name
- J.E. Schep MA
- Telephone
- 071 5272359
- j.e.schep@hum.leidenuniv.nl
- ORCID iD
- 0009-0008-1995-0002
Caroline Schep is a PhD candidate at the Institute for History, working on medical experiments and ethics in late-colonial Indonesia.
Fields of interest
My interests are in medical (ethical) history, history of emotions, Southeast Asian history, nationalism, (colonial) heritage studies and restitution. I mainly focus on the late nineteenth and twentieth century. I have previously worked on national identities in (popular) culture, on the Holocaust and art restitution, on the history of science, and on Austrian history.
Research
My research centres medical experiments with new pharmaceutical drugs in late-colonial Indonesia (ca. 1900-1942). I study how emotions played a role in the practice and ethics of these experiments. In doing so, I focus on the many actors involved, from German pharmaceutical industries to missionaries and of course the patients themselves.
This research is part of Fenneke Sysling's ERC Starting Grant project COMET: Human Subject Research and Medical Ethics in Colonial Southeast Asia.
Curriculum Vitae
Caroline Schep studied History and Art History at Leiden University (cum laude) from 2016-2019. From 2019-2022, she completed Leiden's Research Master in History: Politics, Culture and National Identities (cum laude). During her studies, she worked as an assistant on prof.dr. Herman Paul's VICI-project Scholarly Vices: A Longue Durée History, and for the Foundation for Austrian Studies. In 2021, she worked on the Holocaust in Poland as a research intern at Centropa in Vienna. From 2021-2023, she was part of the Expert Centre for Restitution at the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies. In 2023, she became Conservator of the archives and HDC | Protestant Heritage at the Vrije Universiteit, until she started her PhD trajectory in Leiden later that year.
PhD candidate
- Faculty of Humanities
- Institute for History
- Schep J.E.. TONGUES: Medical Humanities across linguistic and cultural frontiers, Northern Network for Medical Humanities. Lancaster University. [conference attendance].
- Schep J.E. 11 December 2025 - 14 December 2025. STS-Hub 2025: Diffracting the Criticial. Humboldt-Universität. Berlin. [conference attendance].
- Schep J.E. 16 December 2025 - 17 December 2025. Workshop: Contentious Topics in the History of Science. Finnish Academy of Science and Letters. Helsinki. [conference attendance].
- Schep J.E. (18 September 2025), Mendengarkan Keluhan Pasien: Studying Medical History from Below in Colonial Indonesia. Universitas Gadjah Mada, Yogyakarta. [lecture].
- Schep J.E. (29 August 2025), History of Medicine: Interdisciplinary Studies. Universitas Sumatera Utara, Medan. [lecture].
- Schep J.E.. Huizinga Instituut. Utrecht. Organiser. [contribution to an event].
- Schep J.E.. Université Paris-Cité. Paris. [conference attendance].
- Schep J.E. 23 July 2024 - 25 July 2024. EuroSEAS Conference. Universiteit Amsterdam. Amsterdam. [conference attendance].
- Schep J.E. 21 June 2024 - 22 June 2024. 10th Gewina Woudschoten Conference. Gewina. Zeist. [conference attendance].
- Schep J.E. 24 May 2022 - 25 May 2022. ERC Nepostrans: Discourses of Transition in (post-)Habsburg East Central Europe, 1917–1941. ERC Nepostrans: Discourses of Transition in (post-)Habsburg East Central Europe, 1917–1941. Bratislava. [conference attendance].
- Schep J.E. 8 June 2022 - 12 June 2022. Annual Convention of the Austrian and Central European Centers. Annual Convention of the Austrian and Central European Centers. Leiden. [conference attendance].
- Schep J.E. (29 October 2022), Porselein als getuigen van een vlucht en vervolging. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. [lecture].
- Schep J.E. 20 September 2021 - 22 September 2021. ESHS Early Career Scholars Conference. ESHS Early Career Scholars Conference. [conference attendance].