Ger Wackers

Curriculum Vitae

I was born in 1956 in a Dutch town called Sittard. I went to primary and secondary school there. Between 1972 and 1975 I was trained to be a laboratory technician at the Zuidlimburgse Laboratoriumschool Sittard (ZLS). During this training I made a couple of choices. I chose to become a medical laboratory technician (and not a chemical one), and within this medical domain, I chose a specialization in microbiology (and not clinical chemistry). From 1975 - 1976 I worked as a medical laboratory technician at the bacteriological laboratory of De Weverziekhuis in Heerlen, the hospital where I also did my internship.

In 1976 I got a job offer from Narvik Sykehus and I decided to move to the northern part of Norway, a couple of hundred miles above the polar circle. Narvik Sykehus is a small hospital with approximately 150 beds and a small laboratory staff working in close collaboration with physicians, nurses and other disciplines in the hospital. Narvik's coming into being, and its present day existence, depended on the railway that was build in the beginning of this century from Kiruna in Sweden to the Norwegian atlantic (transport of iron ore). Being at the end of the railway track leading north from Stockholm, and having a busy deep sea harbor, patient's with exotic diseases regularly visited Narvik Hospital. The laboratory staff worked in close collaboration with the hospital's physicians to solve these often complex diagnostic problems. The opportunity to learn a new language, the stimulating working environment and the magnificent natural surroundings (and some other reasons of a personal nature) turned my move to Narvik into a live event.

But the stimulating working environment in Narvik Sykehus motivated me to want more and do more. In 1978 I decided to return to the Netherlands to study medicine at the newly established medical faculty in Maastricht. However, after my graduation as a physician, I decided (for various reasons) not to pursue a career in medical practice, but to go into research and teaching. From 1986 - 1991 I held an appointment at the Department of Health Ethics and Philosophy of the Faculty of Health Sciences, of the University of Limburg (now called Maastricht University). During this period is did the major part of my PhD-research. In 1992 I moved from the Faculty of Health Sciences to the Faculty of Arts and Culture, where I got an appointment with the Department of Philosophy. Three years later I moved to my current position at the Department of Technology and Society Studies.

I finished my Ph-D thesis Constructivist Medicine in the fall of 1994. At that point, having become a student in science and technology studies, I decided to move my research into a new empirical field. Out of my initial explorations into environmental issues grew my main current research interest that I nurture now: issues of vulnerability of complex technological systems.