Dr. Malin Sonja Wilckens

What am I researching?

As co-project leader, I address questions of human differentiation at the intersection of more-than-human relations and the history of science. The focus is on shifts both in external and internal human differentiation, as well as in the changing effectiveness and function of these differentiations across layers of meaning – practices, representations, and narratives – and within specific historical constellations. Among other things, the relationships between human-human, human-animal, human-transcendence, and human-environment will be analyzed in connection with their respective (popular) reifications.

About me

Since the end of 2023, I have been a research associate at the Leibniz Institute for European History. Previously, I worked as a research associate specializing in 19th and 20th-century history at the Universities of Bielefeld and Kiel. As a doctoral candidate supported by the German Academic Scholarship Foundation at the University of Bielefeld, I undertook research stays at Stanford University and the German Historical Institute in Washington. In 2025/2026, I was a visiting scholar at the German Historical Institute in London and at the Institute of Advanced Studies at University College London. My research interests encompass the history of science, historical ‘race’ studies, global history, as well as environmental, technological, and labour history.

Why human differentiation?

Questions about how differentiations are created and in which (glocal) constellations they take effect have occupied me since the beginning of my academic career. In my dissertation, I already explored practices of collecting and comparing human remains in relation to the category of 'race' in the late 18th and 19th centuries, examining processes of differentiation from a praxeological perspective.

In addition to the processes of racialization in anthropology, I have also addressed essentializing practices in the handling, historical attribution, and valorization of human remains, as well as with historiographical and methodological questions in ‘race’ studies. Since 2024, I have been a member of an interdisciplinary research group (2024-2026) within the Netias Network of the Institutes for Advanced Study on the handling of human remains. 

Photo: Barbara Mainz