Meike Katzek, M.A.

• Since 10/2024 Research assistant at the professorship for History of Science at the University of Erfurt
• Since 04/2024 Research assistant to support public relations work, Society for the History of Science, Medicine and Technology (GWMT)
• 08/2022 - 02/2024 Research Assistant at the Professorship for History of Science, Professor Dr Bernhard Kleeberg, Department of History, University of Erfurt
• 04/2020 - 09/2024 M.A. History transcultural, University of Erfurt (Erfurt, Thuringia) and Temple University (Philadelphia, PA, USA)
• 08/2019 - 10/2019 Junior Scholarship at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars (funded by the DAAD), Washington, D.C., USA; archival stays: National Archives at College Park, MD and Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, Simi Valley, CA
• 04/2019 - 02/2024 Research Assistant at the Professorship for Modern and Contemporary History and History Didactics, Professor Dr Christiane Kuller, Department of History, University of Erfurt
• 07/2018 - 09/2023 Research Assistant in the DFG Research Group "Voluntariness", Department of History, University of Erfurt
• 04/2019 - 09/2021 Research assistant in the BMBF research project "Dikaturerfahrung und Transformation", Department of History, University of Erfurt
• 04/2018 - 07/2021 Tutor at the Professorship for Modern and Contemporary History and History Didactics, Professor Christiane Kuller, Department of History, University of Erfurt
• 10/2017 - 03/2019 Student assistant at the Gotha Research Centre, University of Erfurt
• 10/2016 - 03/2020 B.A. Economics, Law and Social Sciences / International Relations and History, University of Erfurt (Erfurt, Thuringia)
   

Anti-Anti-Science

The PhD project is dedicated to the historicisation of discourse figurations in which scientific ideals and epistemological concepts, such as truth and objectivity as well as their scientific theorisation, were combined with political positions of the New Right in academic and political discourses of post-democratic states - USA and FRG - at the end of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st century. As a discursive starting point, US and German debate positions of "postmodern scepticism" or a critique of "left-wing intellectuals" or "multiculturalism" are used, which usually go hand in hand with a diverse cultural critique and are directed in particular against scientific fields that have produced alternative epistemologies from their critique since the 1970s, such as science, gender or black studies and related fields of research.

The doctoral project uses the praxeologies of truth as a method to examine these "postmodern-sceptic" debate positions in order to focus on the political dimension of epistemological disputes. In this approach, truth is not subjected to the supratemporal, epistemological categories of "true/false", but is understood as a historically contingent social operator - as a technology of identity politics. From this analytical perspective, the close link between truth and subjectivity becomes comprehensible and can show the extent to which supposedly politically free discussions about epistemology require an epistemic-moral solidarisation, which in turn can be politically appropriated. From this perspective, truth is to be understood as a socio-political practical effect. This "doing truth" is analysed in a "micro-analysis of specific settings and scripts, subjects and values, places and practices". The historicisation of truth practices in selected debates is informed by perspectives of historical and political epistemology on the scientific ideals of "objectivity" and "truth".

Political-epistemological discourse figurations that will be historically analysed in this way are, for example, the truth figure of the modern "scientist", its socio-political, especially gender dimension and exclusionary effects. At the same time, it will be examined to what extent a social figure of "the left-wing intellectual" or later "the postmodern" as a representative of the "academic left" and possible cipher for the moralised demand for "political correctness" has been stabilised or repeatedly reproduced by various discourses from the 1970s to the present day and is linked to disavowing discourse figures of "wokeism" or "cancel culture" in the context of digital mass media.
 

Publications

• Conference report: Meike Katzek, Conference report: Why Intelligence? The political and social roots of a scientific object, 22.02.2024 - 23.02.2024 Erfurt, in: H-Soz-Kult, 15.11.2024, URL.
• Blog post: "Grey areas of voluntariness. Panel discussion on the significance of "voluntary" participation in National Socialist crimes", in: Voluntariness: History - Society - Theory, March 2023, URL.
• Blog post: "Studying history abroad", in: UETeach - Uni Erfut Temple Exchange, December 2021, URL.
• Blog post: "One of the most formative times of my history studies", in: UETeach - Uni Erfut Temple Exchange, December 2021, URL.
• Conference report: Eigen-Sinn reloaded. Confrontations with the thinking of Alf Lüdtke, 30.01.2020 - 31.01.2020 Erfurt, in: H-Soz-Kult, 20.05.2020, URL.
   

Lectures

• Feminist Critique of Science, BA Seminar, Summer Semester 2025, University of Erfurt, Department of History.
• Esoteric knowledge in post-democracy. History, risks and strategies for everyday life, StuFu seminar, summer term 2025, University of Erfurt.
• Reflect Yourself!? Potentials and Limits of a Critical-Reflexive Public History, 11th Workshop of Students and Young Professionals (SYP) in the AG Angewandte Geschichte / Public History in the Association of Historians in Germany (VHD), organised with Sophie Kühnlenz (University of Erfurt), Internationales Begegnungszentrum, Erfurt, 13-14 July 2023.
• Tutorial in the Integrated Proseminar for Modern and Contemporary History and History Didactics, summer semester 2018/ 2019/ 2020/ 2021, as face-to-face, online and hybrid event, University of Erfurt, Department of History.