Janina Wellmann is a NOMIS-eikones Fellow at eikones – Center for the Theory and History of the Image at the University of Basel (Switzerland; starting Jan. 2026) and a fellow at the NYU Remarque Institute and Center for Ballet and the Arts at New York University, US.

Born in Germany, Wellmann studied history, law and philosophy at the University of Hamburg and Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University and graduated from Humboldt University Berlin, Germany. She completed her PhD at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science under Hans-Jörg Rheinberger and received a double degree (cotutelle de thèse) from the Technical University Berlin and the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales Paris in 2007. In 2013, she joined Leuphana University Lüneburg as junior director of the Institute for Advanced Study on Media Cultures of Computer Simulation. Wellmann has held fellowships at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin (2013–2014) and the Harvard Radcliffe Institute (2017–2018); served as stand-in professor at the University of Wuppertal (2024), Harris Distinguished Visiting Professor at Dartmouth (2022), and Hans Jonas Visiting Professor at Forschungsstelle Naturbilder, Hamburg University (2016); and is currently a fellow at the NYU Remarque Institute and Center for Ballet and the Arts.

Research Focus

Wellmann’s work engages with concepts and debates in the modern and contemporary life sciences and biomedicine with a particular focus on the epistemic longevity and visual histories of current approaches.

Building on recent scientific insights into the skin microbiome and working closely with lab scientists, her current research investigates a plurality of skins in their common ecological nature and initiates a novel interdisciplinary understanding of skins as simultaneously natural and cultural ecosystems.

Feature image: Portrait courtesy of Janina Wellmann. Right: The thorny devil (moloch horridus) is an Australian lizard. It has an hydrophilic epidermis enabling the uptake and distribution of water via the skin by touching water or moist grounds with the body in the dry environment of the Australian desert.