Profile

Tamara Schwertel studied Sociology, Political Science, and Philosophy in Frankfurt, Paris, and Lyon. After completing her academic training, she worked as a research assistant at the Chair of Empirical Social Research at the University of Siegen. She has extensive teaching experience across multiple disciplines, including Sociology, Education, Medicine, Midwifery, and Health Services Research, in cities such as Frankfurt, Mainz, Munich, Vienna, and Innsbruck.

Her PhD research focused on the procedure of Deep Brain Stimulation, examining the organization of care from historical, collective, and individual perspectives. She was part of the interdisciplinary Graduate School Life Sciences – Life Writing at the University Medical Center Mainz and an associate member of the Graduate School Doing Transitions in Tübingen. In 2022, she was a visiting student researcher at the Center for Science, Technology, Medicine & Society at the University of California.

Since July 2023, Tamara has been a research associate at IMVR, leading the Q&Q Lab for qualitative and quantitative methods at the Chair of Medical Sociology. She specializes in qualitative methods, with a strong interest in interpretive and reconstructive approaches, including: Situational Analysis (by Adele E. Clarke), Ethnography, Hermeneutics, Documentary Method, and Grounded Theory. Tamara is interested in methodologies and the exploration of new approaches to qualitative research. She is engaged in art-based and performative approaches and participatory methods, seeking innovative ways to integrate these into social research.

Her research interests include organizations and institutional dynamics, history of medicine and the role of gender, the development of health technologies and neurotechnologies and the role and formation of patient organizations and communities. From May 2024 to August 2025, she has been a digital visiting scholar at the Usher Institute and the Centre for Biomedicine, Self and Society in Edinburgh.