University of Gothenburg
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Christine Quarfood

Professor

Department of Literature, History of Ideas, and Religion
Mail
christine.quarfood@lir.gu.se
Visiting address
Renströmsgatan 6
41255 Göteborg
Room number
F246
Postal address
Box 200
40530 Göteborg

About Christine Quarfood

The general focus of my research is on questions regarding educational programs and how they interact with epistemological and anthropological issues. My 1998 doctoral dissertation (French version 2002) specifically examined the educational implications of Condilla's sensationalism. Condillac served as an important link between Locke and Rousseau, and in this way contributed to the Enlightenment pedagogical debate; his famous statue-experiment facilitated a theoretical reconstruction of the early childhood state.

My post-doc. research concerns Montessori, whom I situate in the tradition of sensory education; as a medical doctor she was also inspired by the positivist anthropology of Lombroso and the psychiatric degeneration theory of Morel. My Montessori study, which was published in 2005, indicates that she considered the distinction between abnormal, normal and normalized children to be crucial.

My current research focuses on the Montessori movement in Sweden and Italy during the interwar years (1918-1939). The Swedish part of this study has been published 2011.