Lucie Gerber

Lucie Gerber is a CNRS research officer at the University of Strasbourg, affiliated with the DHVS - Faculty of Medicine, Midwifery and Health Sciences. She is a member of the SAGE laboratory (Sociétés, acteurs, gouvernement en Europe), where she conducts research on the history and epistemology of life and environmental sciences, with a focus on organism-environment relationships, animal experimentation, and biomedical therapeutics.

Her research interests center on the history of experimentation in plant, animal, and human biology, particularly in the 20th and 21st centuries. She investigates artificial climate devices, experimental bioclimatology, the physiology of horticulture and agriculture, and animal modeling in psychopharmacology and mental health research. Her work explores the development of psychotropic drugs and behavioral therapies, situating scientific practices within broader cultural and technological shifts.

Lucie Gerber’s recent publications reflect a strong trend in the historical analysis of scientific instruments, experimental models, and the industrialization of biomedical research. Her work spans the history of phytotrons, the modeling of mental disorders in primates, the transnational circulation of therapeutic practices like assertiveness training, and the role of pharmaceutical marketing in shaping psychiatric diagnoses. She frequently publishes in leading journals such as History of Psychology, Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, and The British Journal for the History of Science.

She has received recognition through invitations to major international conferences and seminars, including events at the University of Zurich, EHESS, and the Max Planck Institute. She is currently involved in the ECOLABOBIO project (2022–2025), funded by Idex Attractivité, which examines the historical and anthropological dimensions of organism-environment relationships in biological and biomedical research.

• ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4730-1455

She actively collaborates with scholars such as Rémy Amouroux, Alexis Zimmer, and Baptiste Moutaud, and has presented her work at numerous international venues, demonstrating sustained scholarly engagement and leadership in the history of science and medicine.