about chiara

Since August 2019 I have been given the wonderful opportunity to join a new research community at the University of Kiel, devoted to the study of human interaction with the environment in a broad-ranging perspective, the research cluster ROOTS. My contribution will be in the field of ancient medicine and science, with a project on ancient views about the nutritional processes in a broad cultural historical perspective, from food consumption to digestion and excretion, from dietetics to eating disorders, from metaphorical ‘resources’ to the portrayal of human anatomy, to economical aspects of eating as fundamental aspect of human relations with the outside world. The title of this project is ANCIENT GUTS.

My interest in the history and narratives of human health and illness began earlier in my research.

After finishing my undegraduate studies in Italy I moved to London to pursue a PhD in Greek literature at King’s College London. I decided I wanted to work on Euripides’ Bacchae, the last play of the youngest of the three great tragedians of the fifth century, precisely because madness, and what it means to have a sound mind is such an important topic in this play.

After obtaining my doctorate (2004) and publishing it (2007) I taught and researched a few more years in London, and kept exploring the topics of mental life and view of self, and to reflect on how ancient poets and writers choose to depict subjectivity, „mind“ and mental suffering in their work.

In 2010 I had a unique opportunity that changed my perspective in a fundamental way: I was offered a post within a research group on history of ancient medicine at the Humboldt University in Berlin („Medicine of the mind, Philosophy of the body“, directed by Ph. Van der Eijk).

I have worked on ancient medical ideas about the relationship between body and soul, bodily and mental/spiritual health and mental disorder ever since. I find the way in which ancient thinkers framed the challenges of psychopathology and the possibility of a 'psychiatry' as caring practice still extremely valuable, often sophisticated and at times more insightful than our own. Whether one shares this view or not, the terms of discussion offered by ancient thinkers remain fundamental in the way we discuss these topics nowadays. In many respects, this value still awaits exploration and recognition in current scholarship.

In addition, I have an interest in wider conceptions of life and health in the ancient world and their heritage - in particular, I have worked on animals and animal imagery, in poetry as well as medicine.

After five years based in the Humboldt University in Berlin, from 2015 to 2019 I have been a Research Fellow at Warwick University, where I held a Wellcome Trust grant in Medical Humanities. I was part of the department of Classics, joining a group of experts in ancient Greek and Arabic medicine directed by Simon Swain. My research project was on the history of an ancient disease, phrenitis, an elusive syndrome which will be part of Western medicine until as late as the 19th century.   

contact: cthumiger@roots.uni-kiel.de, chiara.thumiger@hu-berlin.de