Biography

Carolin Schmitz is a historian of early modern Spain, specializing in the social and cultural history of medicine and the history of the patient. Her current research interest lies in how medicine in its pluralistic form was shaped by, and affected, diverse members of early modern communities.Carolin has been trained in History, Spanish Philology and Ethnology (BA/MA degree, University of Trier), and in the History of Science and Scientific Communication (MA degree, University of Valencia).In 2016 she completed her PhD in the History of Science and Medicine at the University of Valencia under the supervision of María Luz López Terrada.Her dissertation, titled ‘The Sick in Baroque Spain (1600-1740): Spaces, Strategies and Attitudes’, combines different approaches (micro history, literary studies and medical anthropological concepts) and explores how space, movement and decisions shaped the experience of sickness in the medical pluralism of Early Modern Spain.During the year of the Max Weber Fellowship, she plans to set the groundwork for a new research project. Evolving from her previous work and based on a substantially extended number of inquisitorial trial records, this project will focus on the relationships between extra-academic healers and patients as well as on the process of constructing their individual and collective identities.