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Staff Profile

Dr Lutz Sauerteig

Senior Lecturer in Medical Humanities (History of Medicine)

Background

As a cultural historian I am working in the field of medical humanities with a focus on history of medicine, sexualities, gender, and bodies. I studied Modern European History, History of Eastern and South-Eastern Europe, Theatre Studies, and Cultural Anthropology at Ludwig-Maximilian's University Munich (M.A. in History, 1989), the University of Oxford, and Humboldt University Berlin (Dr. phil. in History, 1996).

From 1990 to 1992, I worked as Research Assistant for the late Professor Thomas Nipperdey at the Institute for Modern History, Munich University. From 1994 to 2003, I was Lecturer in history of medicine at the Institute for History of Medicine, Medical Faculty, Albert-Ludwig's University Freiburg, and from 2003 to 2017 at Durham University (Wellcome University Award Holder 2003-8, since 2010 Senior Lecturer). In August 2017, I joined Newcastle University as Senior Lecturer in Medical Humanities (History of Medicine). I am member of the Population Health Sciences Institute, the Steering Group of the Medical Humanities Network in the Humanities Reserach Institute, and a member of the Gender Research Group.

From 2000 to 2012, I served on the Executive Committee of the Society for the Social History of Medicine (a registered charity organisation; Charity number 278414) and have been the the Society's Chair from 2008 to 2011.

Areas of Expertise

  • History of Bodies
  • History of Sexualities and Gender
  • History of Public Health in the 19th and 20th Centuries
  • History of Medical Ethics in the 19th and 20th Centuries
  • History of Venereal Diseases/STIs


Research

ResearcherID: B-3217-2014

Current Research Projects

History of sex education in Germany, 1880s to ca 1980
This project investigates the cultural history of sex education of young people in Germany from around 1900 to the end of the 1970s. It offers the first comprehensive investigation of sex education from late Imperial and Weimar Germany, to the Third Reich and post-war Germany in English language. It takes the political, social and cultural context of sex education into account but the main focus is on a detailed analysis of the content of sex education material that has been produced for the purpose of teaching and informing young people about sexuality.
Studying sex education material provides important insight into the shaping of gender and sexual identities in relation to knowledge of the body, cultural scripts of erotic and sexual practices, and sexual morality and risky behaviours. At the centre of my project is the question how different forms of textual, verbal and visual material constructed gendered bodies and shaped the construction of ‘heterosexuality’. Sex education material reflects and simultaneously shapes understandings of gender in a society as well as its changing moral and sexual fears, what, for instance, was assumed to be ‘normal’, acceptable sexual behaviour. Sex education material, therefore, can be read as a culturally and historically contingent repertoire of concepts of the gendered body. It tells us what kind of sexual knowledge at specific points of time was perceived by society as important to be conveyed to the young – and what was to be kept secret from them (e.g. for a long time birth control methods), hence what sex education material was silent about.
History of Puberty in the 19th and 20th Centuries

Key Publications:

List of key publications: https://newcastle.academia.edu/LutzSauerteig



Teaching

Undergraduate Teaching

  • Lecturer on the module 'Evidence and Argument' (HIS 1100)
  • Lecturer on the module 'Diversities of Sexuality and Gender in History' (HIS 2322)
  • Lecturer on the module 'Health and Illness: Professional and Societal Perspectives' (BMS 3015)


Postgraduate Teaching

MA History

  • Module Leader of 'The Patient in History' (SHS 8127)
  • Lecturer on the module 'Introduction to the History of Medicine' (SHS 8124)
  • Supervisor of MA dissertation projects

Public and Global Health Programme:

  • Supervisor MSc projects in Public and Global Health
  • MSc Public Health: Personal Tutor


Current PhD Students

First Supervisor:

  • Ryan Fallon (Northern Bridge PhD studentship): Finding the Voice of the Child Patient: The Stannington Children’s Hospital, 1920-1980.
  • Alessandro Bianchi (Illand PhD studentship): The Most Social of Maladies: The ‘Social Imaginary’ of Madness in France and England, 1789-1838.

Second Supervisor:

  • Kyra Helberg: The Evolving Role of Dissection in Pre-Anaesthetic Surgical Education, Practice, and Professional Identity, 1746–1846.
  • Charlotte White: A Guide to Good Health: Visual Representations of Morality, the Environment and Tuberculosis in Early 20th Century Art and Print Culture.


Past PhD Students at Newcastle

  • Heather Dixon: Risk, play and the body in the design of sex education programmes: a co-design study with three North East organisations (Viva 2023).
Publications