Trine Outzen

My dissertation project, “World change through human change - Pietistic knowledge and practices of medical and spiritual health in Halle in the early 18th. Century”, analyses how medical and spiritual knowledge of health was a part of pietistic utopian thought and practice in Halle an der Saale, Germany in the early 18. Century. In the pietistic context in Halle, the project’s thesis is that dietetic knowledge and the Christian concept of Christus Medicus were intertwined. Medical knowledge became a part of a salvation strategy and a useful tool to criticise contemporary society. Health was conceptualised as a prophylactic strategy that implies a practical aspect of why the project aims to analyse how health knowledge was practised in Halle and which kind of problems and conflicts these practices met. The project is embedded in a social constructivist view on medicine and religion. It takes an approach to knowledge put forward by the History of Knowledge and the German historian Simone Lässig. Lässig claims that the limits between knowledge and faith are fluid and in different times, different claims of the world were considered truths. Based on this, the project wants to move beyond a dichotomous understanding of scientific knowledge and religious faith. By contrast, the project proposes an approach where faith is considered a knowledge that equals medical knowledge. MY research interests are the history of medicine and psychiatry and the intersection between knowledge, emotions, religion and science in the early modern period.