N. (Noortje) Jacobs

Noortje Jacobs researches the history of medicine and science. Currently, she is working on her Veni-project Valuing the Body, in which she investigates the moral history of the use of bodily materials in twentieth-century Dutch medicine. In 2022, her book Ethics by Committee. A History of Reasoning Together about Medicine, Science, Society, and the State came out with The University of Chicago Press, in which she traces the history of Dutch research ethics governance.

In addition to her research activities, Noortje Jacobs is one of the coordinators of Research integrity education at the Erasmus MC and she is the project leader of a large HoKa-project that develops academic education on the role of physicians in large societal health crises for the medical bachelor curriculum in Rotterdam. She received her education from Berkeley University, Oxford University, Maastricht University, and Utrecht University.

• N. Jacobs, Ethics by Committee. A History of Reasoning Together About Medicine, Science, Society, and the State (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2022)
• N. Jacobs & B. Theunissen, ‘It’s Groundhog Day! What can the history of science say about the crisis in Alzheimer’s research?’ in Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease (forthcoming)
• N. Jacobs (2021). “An Official Conscience and Warranting Agency”: Institutional Isomorphism and the Rise of Dutch Ethics Review in the 1970s and 1980s, European Journal for the History of Medicine and Health. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/26667711-bja10009
• N. Jacobs & Helena Tinnerholm Ljungberg (2021). How Ethics Travels: The International Development of Research Ethics Committees in the Late Twentieth Century, European Journal for the History of Medicine and Health Vol. 78 (2). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/26667711-20210001
• N. Jacobs. “A Moral Obligation to Human Experimentation: Research Ethics as Epistemic Filter in the Aftermath of World War II.” Isis 111 (2020): 759-780. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1086/712205
• N. Jacobs and Pieter Huistra. “Gatekeepers of Responsible Research. Funding bodies in late modern science, a special issue.” International Journal for History, Culture and Modernity 7 (2019): 887-898. DOI: https://doi.org/10.18352/hcm.584
• N. Jacobs. “Summary of The History Manifesto.” Isis 107 (2016): 311-314. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1086/68717

• Lecturer in the Erasmus MC bachelor curriculum
• Coordinator Research integrity education Erasmus MC
• Project leader HoKa-project Pandemie!

• Board member of the European Association for the History of Medicine and Health
• Board member of the Stichting Historia Medicinae

Grants:

• Veni-grant (2022-2026): Valuing the body. A moral history of human tissues in twentieth-century medicine (Principal investigator)
• ZonMw (2019): Public Gatekeepers of Responsible Research (project leader)
• Descartes Center for the History and Philosophy of the Sciences and the Humanities (2018): Network grant to set-up an international network on ‘Accountability in Global health (work package leader)
• NWO PhD in the Humanities (2012-2018): Ethics by Committee. Governing human experimentation in the Netherlands, 1945-2000 (Principal investigator)

Prizes:

• 2018: Honorary mention Dissertation Prize Forum for the History of Human Science, History of Science Society
• 2013: Descartes-Huygens thesis award (History of Sciences and Universities)
• 2013: Historia Medicinae award for the best PhD-talk at the 2013 conference of the European Association for the History of Medicine and Health
• 2012: Pieter van Foreest award for academic talent in the medical humanities
• 2009: Alumni speech Graduation Ceremony—University College Maastricht
• 2008: Best thesis of 2008 award of the Humanities Faculty, Maastricht University

Veni-grant (2022-2026): Valuing the body. A moral history of human tissues in twentieth-century medicine (Principal investigator)