Martina is Senior Teaching Fellow in Science Communication in the Department of Physics. She is a passionate cross-disciplinarian with two PhDs, one in neuropharmacology, one in the health humanities, and invested in overcoming antagonism between the natural, life and medical sciences and the humanities.

Martina trained as a pharmaceutical scientist, specialised in neuropharmacology and holds a Habilitation in Pharmacology from Goethe University Frankfurt. Over time, her research interests increasingly shifted towards the boundary between science, medicine and literature and, after a MA in Literature and Medicine, she undertook a second, Wellcome Trust funded PhD in the health humanities. Her research is driven by two questions: how does culture frame the questions and paradigms of leading scientific and medical researchers in ageing and diseases of old age? And how do scientific research developments act as cultural force? Her first book, the Poetics and Politics of Alzheimer’s Disease Life-Writing (Palgrave, 2017), is available open access thanks to Wellcome Trust funding. Her second book, The Diseased Brain and the Failing Mind. Dementia in Science, Medicine and Literature of the Long Twentieth Century, will focus on scientific and cultural dementia narratives. It is due to be published in 2020, will appear in Bloomsbury's new series, Explorations in Science and Literature, and also be available open access thanks to the Wellcome Trust. You can find out more about her publication activities here.

One motivation for Martina’s shift in research interests was the near absence of the patient’s illness experience in the pharmaceutical sciences curriculum: her work on patient and caregiver narratives continues to be paralleled by efforts to integrate aspects of illness experience in her teaching. Martina’s teaching covers both the health humanities and the sciences. She has lectured in pharmacology, physiology, clinical pharmacy and pharmaceutical care, and has also taught on health humanities related modules, including narrative medicine and illness narrative as life-writing. She loves teaching Communicating Science (PX376) and, in 2019/20, will co-convene Medical Mind (IL901). She recently has designed a discipline-crossing IATL module, Science in Context (IL920).

 

 

 

 

Coming soon: The Diseased Brain and the Failing Mind. Dementia in Science, Medicine and Literature of the Long Twentieth Century (Bloomsbury, 2020), open access thanks to Wellcome Trust funding.

Email

Martina dot Zimmermann at warwick dot ac dot uk