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Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology

Photo: Lena Borlinghaus-ter Veer

Sleep and Sleeplessness in Germany – Rethinking Agency, Knowledge, and Experience through Sleep

Sleep research is booming. With the help of apps and sleep laboratories, sleep seems to have become measurable. New pharmaceuticals and medical technologies promise to give us control over sleep. But how do these new worlds of knowledge affect the experience of sleep, especially for those who yearn for good sleep but fail to achieve it? This ongoing project draws attention to the dilemmas of sleep knowledge production and follows technological interventions which are designed to reveal, manage, and/or overcome sleep problems. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in sleep labs and at sleep conferences in Germany, and on interviews with sleep doctors, researchers and patients, the project has focused on a number of interconnected questions: How is ‘evidence-based’ knowledge on sleep produced and how is it applied in diagnosis and therapy? What happens to sleep at the interface of human and machine? And what do people do when they cannot sleep?

Theoretically, the project reflects on the relationship between knowledge, evidence and experience in the medical sphere: What is the relationship between subjectively experienced and objectively measured sleep? Furthermore, sleep is being used to rethink conceptualization of agency, for instance by analyzing how people try – and often fail – to ‘make sleep happen’.

The project has resulted in a number of publications (see below) and has also been the basis for a successful Heisenberg funding application that was approved in December 2025. With the Heisenberg grant (DFG), the project will enter a new phase, shifting its focus from sleep in the medico-technical sphere to sleep and sleeplessness as experienced by academics. The aim is to complete a book project with the current working title “Staying Awake with the Trouble: Academics, Insomnia, and Illusions of Agency”.

 

 
Important academic publications related to the project:

  • Vorhölter, Julia. (accepted, forthcoming) Ingenious, Imposturous, or Simply Incredible? Performing Pioneering at Academic Conferences. HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory.
  • Vorhölter, Julia. 2024. “Agency”. The Open Encyclopedia of Anthropology, edited by Rachel Cantave. Online: Link
  • Vorhölter, Julia. 2024. (Mis)Perceiving Apnea and Insomnia in Germany: A Tale of Two Disorders. Medical Anthropology 43(1): 46–60.
  • Vorhölter, Julia. 2024. The Insomniac’s Stubborn Hope. American Ethnologist Curated Collection (Theme: Living in a Mode of Despite): Link
  • Vorhölter, Julia. 2023: Sleeping with Strangers – Techno-Intimacy and Side-Affects in a German Sleep Lab. Historical Social Research, 48:2 (23-40).

 
Video Lectures and Publications for the General Public

  • January 2025: Sleeping with Strangers. Produced for the MPI-Series Talk On. Available online at: Link
  • Oct. 2022: Über Schlaf und Schlaflosigkeit in Deutschland/ Sleep and Sleeplessness in Germany. Produced for the MPI-Series Spot On - 3 Minutes of Anthropology. Available online at: Link (German) and Link (English).

 
Newspaper Interview:

März 2025: Interview mit Matthias Müller, Wissenschaftsredakteur der MZ: ‚Der Schlaf der Anderen‘. Mitteldeutsche Zeitung, 12.03.2025: Seite 12.