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. (2025), 'Los von Paris!': Wiener Werkstätte Fashion and the paradox of nationalism and cosmopolitanism, 1911-1932. In: Edelmayer K., Kühnel F. & Wakounig M. (Eds.), Central Europe in times of change: Europa orientalis 23. Vienna: LIT Verlag. 53-71.
- Schep J.E. (31 July 2025), Slangengif als geneesmiddel: van koloniale experimenten tot moderne behandelingen [Snake venom as medicine: from colonial experiments to modern treatments]. Historiek.net. [blog entry].
- Schep J.E. (18 January 2024), When scientific freedom and power collide: the case of Adolf Ellinger’s Eel Blood Therapy. COMET. [blog entry].
- Schep J.E. (29 October 2024), A last resort: legitimizing medical experiments in the colony. Shells and Pebbles. [blog entry].
- Schep J.E. (2022), Fueling nationalism: social and cultural media frames in French and British newspaper coverage of Formula 1 racing, 1981–1985, National Identities 25(1): 21-34.
- Schep J.E. & Paul H.J. (2022), Denial of coevalness: charges of dogmatism in the nineteenth-century humanities, History of European Ideas 48(6): 778-794.