Julia Rehsmann
I am a medical anthropologist and senior research fellow at the University of Bern and Bern University of Applied Sciences. Most recently, I've led the collaborative research project "Pandemic Objects", which used (design-) ethnographic research methods to explore how the Covid-19 pandemic affected everyday work in a Swiss hospital and was published as a special exhibition in the online museum of the Medical Collection Inselspital Bern. Until recently, I've been working as a postdoctoral researcher on the interdisciplinary research project "Sterbesettings/Settings of Dying", a collaboration with the Bern University of the Arts and the Zurich University of the Arts and funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF), on inpatient palliative care in Switzerland. In this project, I was particularly interested in gender in health care and the negotiation of expertise in interdisciplinary and transprofessional settings.
My PhD research focused on liver transplants and temporality in Germany, exploring the existential, political and technological dimensions of waiting in transplant medicine. I conducted research on this topic as part of the "Intimate Uncertainties" project, funded by the SNSF, and was a visiting scholar at the Brocher Foundation in Geneva and an SNSF-funded Doc.Mobility fellow at the University of Liverpool.
I studied cultural and social anthropology at the University of Vienna and graduated in 2012 with the thesis "Act of Violence - Act of Love", in which I explored transnational adoption between Austria and Ethiopia. Together with Sarah Hildebrand, Gerhild Perl, and Veronika Siegl, I published the book "Hope", a collaboration between social anthropology, photography, and literature.
My research interests include organ transplants, palliative and end-of-life care, as well as gender medicine/health, temporality, expertise, and the hospital as more than a medical space. I have conducted hospital ethnographies and fieldwork in transplant clinics, city hospitals and university hospitals in Germany and Switzerland. Recently, I have become increasingly interested in interdisciplinary and participatory research, especially collaborations with design and health research.
Supervisors: Prof. Dr. Eva Soom Ammann, Prof. Dr. Sabine Strasser, and Prof. Dr. Ciara Kierans
My PhD research focused on liver transplants and temporality in Germany, exploring the existential, political and technological dimensions of waiting in transplant medicine. I conducted research on this topic as part of the "Intimate Uncertainties" project, funded by the SNSF, and was a visiting scholar at the Brocher Foundation in Geneva and an SNSF-funded Doc.Mobility fellow at the University of Liverpool.
I studied cultural and social anthropology at the University of Vienna and graduated in 2012 with the thesis "Act of Violence - Act of Love", in which I explored transnational adoption between Austria and Ethiopia. Together with Sarah Hildebrand, Gerhild Perl, and Veronika Siegl, I published the book "Hope", a collaboration between social anthropology, photography, and literature.
My research interests include organ transplants, palliative and end-of-life care, as well as gender medicine/health, temporality, expertise, and the hospital as more than a medical space. I have conducted hospital ethnographies and fieldwork in transplant clinics, city hospitals and university hospitals in Germany and Switzerland. Recently, I have become increasingly interested in interdisciplinary and participatory research, especially collaborations with design and health research.
Supervisors: Prof. Dr. Eva Soom Ammann, Prof. Dr. Sabine Strasser, and Prof. Dr. Ciara Kierans
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Mit Fotografien von Sarah Hildebrand und Beiträgen der Sozialanthropologinnen Gerhild Perl, Julia Rehsmann und Veronika Siegl.
Hope ist aus der Zusammenarbeit der Künstlerin Sarah Hildebrand mit drei Sozialanthropologinnen der Universität Bern entstanden. Abseits sensationsorientierter Berichterstattung folgt Hope mit eindrücklichen Fotografien und Texten den Spuren von Menschen, die Grenzen überschreiten, um ein ersehntes Ziel zu erreichen: ein Kind zu haben, ein längeres Leben führen zu dürfen oder eine selbstbestimmte Existenz zu leben.
Einfühlsam berichten die Autorinnen von der Hoffnung auf ein Kind durch die reproduktive Arbeit einer fremden Frau, vom Warten darauf, auf der Warteliste einer Organspende nach oben zu rücken, und sie folgen den Hoffnungen Flüchtender, die auf hoher See verschwunden sind oder an Europas Küsten zerschellen. Ein sensibles, aufrichtiges, menschliches Buch.
Flight to Europe, surrogate motherhood in Russia, organ donation in Germany: wishes and hopes from an artistic, scientific and literary viewpoint.
With photographs by Sarah Hildebrand and essays by social anthropologists Gerhild Perl, Julia Rehsmann and Veronika Siegl.
Hope is the fruit of a collaboration between the artist Sarah Hildebrand and three social anthropologists from the University of Berne. Shunning sensationalist reportage, Hope, with its compelling photographs and texts, follows the trail of people who transgress borders so as to achieve a desired goal: to have a child, be to able to prolong their life or to have an autonomous existence.
The authors report sensitively on the hope for a child through the reproductive work of a foreign woman, on waiting to get on a list for a donated organ. They also follow up on the hopes of refugees lost on the high seas or dashed on Europe’s shores. A sensitive, honest and humane book.
Mit Fotografien von Sarah Hildebrand und Beiträgen der Sozialanthropologinnen Gerhild Perl, Julia Rehsmann und Veronika Siegl.
Hope ist aus der Zusammenarbeit der Künstlerin Sarah Hildebrand mit drei Sozialanthropologinnen der Universität Bern entstanden. Abseits sensationsorientierter Berichterstattung folgt Hope mit eindrücklichen Fotografien und Texten den Spuren von Menschen, die Grenzen überschreiten, um ein ersehntes Ziel zu erreichen: ein Kind zu haben, ein längeres Leben führen zu dürfen oder eine selbstbestimmte Existenz zu leben.
Einfühlsam berichten die Autorinnen von der Hoffnung auf ein Kind durch die reproduktive Arbeit einer fremden Frau, vom Warten darauf, auf der Warteliste einer Organspende nach oben zu rücken, und sie folgen den Hoffnungen Flüchtender, die auf hoher See verschwunden sind oder an Europas Küsten zerschellen. Ein sensibles, aufrichtiges, menschliches Buch.
Flight to Europe, surrogate motherhood in Russia, organ donation in Germany: wishes and hopes from an artistic, scientific and literary viewpoint.
With photographs by Sarah Hildebrand and essays by social anthropologists Gerhild Perl, Julia Rehsmann and Veronika Siegl.
Hope is the fruit of a collaboration between the artist Sarah Hildebrand and three social anthropologists from the University of Berne. Shunning sensationalist reportage, Hope, with its compelling photographs and texts, follows the trail of people who transgress borders so as to achieve a desired goal: to have a child, be to able to prolong their life or to have an autonomous existence.
The authors report sensitively on the hope for a child through the reproductive work of a foreign woman, on waiting to get on a list for a donated organ. They also follow up on the hopes of refugees lost on the high seas or dashed on Europe’s shores. A sensitive, honest and humane book.