Niklas Thode Jensen

My field of research is the history of science in the colonial world of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. My current project focuses on science and scientific networks in the Danish East Indies in the period c. 1770-1845. Of special importance here are the protestant missionaries of Tranquebar (Tamil Nadu) and the interactions of Europeans and Indians in the construction of “scientific” knowledge. For conducting research in India I am affiliated to the French Institute in Pondicherry.

I obtained my PhD in 2006 from the University of Copenhagen with the dissertation “For the Health of the Enslaved: Disease and colonial health policies among plantation slaves on St. Croix, Danish West Indies, 1803-1848” (funded by the Danish Research Council for the Humanities). The thesis focused on health systems and power relations in the enslaved populations of the Danish West Indies in a comparative Caribbean perspective. It is currently being revised for publication as a monograph.

In 2008 I held a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Copenhagen (funded by the Carlsberg Foundation) and in 2009 a one term research fellowship at the Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine, University of Oxford (funded by the Bikuben Foundation).

As Assistant Professor at the Saxo Institute, Department of History, University of Copenhagen during the years 2006-2007 I co-taught a postgraduate class on colonialism and cultural encounters in the Danish conglomerate state 1700-1900, and an undergraduate class on the theories and historiography of history.

I have published articles in Bulletin of the History of Medicine, Medical History, and the Routledge series Studies in the Social History of Medicine (SSHM).