DoctorHeather Wolffram

My current research revolves around the formation and practice of forensic medicine and forensic science in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, focussing, in particular, on the crime scene work of German medico-legalists.

Previous projects have included a Marsden-funded project titled, "Criminal Minds: A History of Forensic Psychology", which explored the interdisciplinary roots of the field. The major output of this project was a monograph published by Palgrave Macmillan as Forensic Psychology in Germany: Witnessing Crime, 1880-1939 (2018). Another project focussing on forensic medicine in colonial contexts explored forensic medicine in inter-war Egypt and was funded by a Wellcome Trust Research Bursary.

Much of my doctoral and postdoctoral work was concerned with the history of psychical research and parapsychology in Germany. I have published several papers on aspects of this history (see list under "Papers") and my book The Stepchildren of Science: Psychical Research and Parapsychology in Germany, c. 1870-1939 was published (November 2009) as part of Clio Medica:The Wellcome Series in the History of Medicine - Rodopi.