Olga Amsterdamska

Olga Amsterdamska  (1953 - 2009) studied philosophy and sociology at Yale University (BA, cum laude, 1975) and completed her graduate education in sociology at Columbia (PhD 1984). Her dissertation, written under the supervision of Robert K. Merton, was published as Schools of Thought: The Development of Linguistics from Bopp to Saussure (Reidel 1987).

Since 1984 she has worked at the University of Amsterdam, first in the Department of Science Dynamics and more recently in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology.  Her research focuses on social studies of science and medicine. She is particularly interested in the historical development of the biomedical sciences and their relations to medical practice. In articles in journals and edited collections, Olga Amsterdamska has studied the development of epidemiology, bacteriology and biochemistry, the history of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, representations of alcoholism in Polish literature, the history of laboratory testing in medicine, and a number of theoretical issues in the social studies of science. She is currently working on two longer term projects: one examines the history of epidemiology and changing ideas of how epidemiological studies should be done, the other focuses on biological and psychological research on autism and the cultural contexts of medical classifications. Her most recent publications include: “Demarcating Epidemiology,” Science, Technology and Human Values 30 (2005); ‘Achieving Disbelief: Microbial Variation and the Disciplinary and National Styles in Epidemiology,” Studies in the History of the Biological and Biomedical Sciences (2004) and (with Anja Hiddinga) “Trading Zones or Citadels: Professionalization and Intellectual Change in the History of Medicine,” in Medical History: The Stories and Their Meanings, edited by Frank Huisman and John H. Warner  (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004).

She is the former editor of the journal of the Society for Social Studies of Science, Science Technology and Human Values.  She has also been a member of the council of the European Association for the Social Studies of Science and Technology and of the Section on Sociology of Science of the International Sociological Association. She is an associate editor of the American Sociological Review and was one of the editors of the Handbook of Social Studies of Science (published by the MIT Press in 2007) for the Society for Social Studies of Science.

http://home.medewerker.uva.nl/o.amsterdamska/