Ramona A. Braun

Ramona A. Braun

Ramona was awarded a PhD in 2014 with a thesis in Global History. She is an expert on photography and film as historical sources and contemporary German history, and is also proficient in working with Oral History and family archives. Her supervisors were Sir Richard J.Evans and Charles A. Jones.

During her PhD with a transnational focus, Ramona acquired extensive knowledge on gender and 20th century social history in Latin America, in particular the Southern Cone. Her thesis is the first history of the invention and development of laparoscopic surgery, also known as minimally invasive surgery, through a transcontinental exchange between scientists and physicians in Europe, the US, and Latin America during the 1940s-70s. This research covers international networks of knowledge and  research in scientific societies as well as the contributions of Latin American researchers to the advancement of medicine and technology. Migration and travel are key to these exchanges, as are established networks of eugenic thinking in different countries, including German Nazi eugenics. Ramona analyzed color photographs, photographic slides and 16mm analog films in their function as tokens of knowledge exchange and visual objects in science.

Ramona organized an international conference in order to advance the contemporary history of science in 2014. A trilogy of volumes drawing on this research is forthcoming with different editing houses.