Caroline Schep is a PhD candidate at the Institute for History, working on medical experiments and ethics in late-colonial Indonesia.

More information about Caroline Schep

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.

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Activities