Section: Research Groups

Science Studies Unit

Members of the Science Studies Unit examine the social construction of scientific knowledge in a variety of historical, geographical, and disciplinary settings. Our links to one another are therefore those of method and approach grounded in the sociology of scientific knowledge. Through these links a diverse range of projects are brought together. We work to continue the Edinburgh tradition of examining the social causes for our scientific beliefs.

With alumni located all over the globe, we enjoy the benefits of wide collaborations. A long-standing research centre in the University, the group remains the home for the 'Edinburgh School' in the sociology of scientific knowledge.

Research conducted by members of the group includes

  • Science and travel in late-colonial British Africa
  • a comparative study of British and German aerodynamics
  • history of the body
  • the insanity defence and psychiatry in colonial East Africa
  • Culture and Psychiatry: Koro and culture-bound syndromes
  • Relations between medical science, practice and policy at the turn of the twentieth century
  • history of psychiatry in Hungary
  • social and epistemic constitution of clinical knowledge in Edinburgh in the early twentieth century
  • the institutionalisation of veterinary science in eastern Africa, 1946-2006
  • the scientific works of Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679)

This page was published on 6 July 2009


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