Martina Kessel: An Empire of Shaming:
Survivors of the Shoah have often described how the SS liked to define torturing practices during the genocide as ‘jokes’. The paper discusses the systematic presence of derisive laughter in Nazi...
View ArticleAlice Rio: Legal Role-Playing and Storytelling in Early Medieval Francia
An enduring problem in early medieval history is what to make of the legal material, which is abundant relative to the total surviving evidence (legislation, acts of practice, models, old texts, new...
View ArticlePeter Burschel: The Dance of the Tapuya:
This lecture will show how European perceptions of skin colour increasingly began to influence European perceptions of non-European ‘aliens’. Peter Burschel will argue that it was not until the...
View ArticleNandini Gooptu: New Cultures of Work, Youth, and Politics in India
New workplaces and work cultures have grown in tandem with India’s consumer revolution, notably in the burgeoning interactive service sector. Here, the demands of customer service are reshaping the...
View ArticlePatrice Poutrus: Contested Asylum:
After 1945, both the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic included asylum law, and thus the admission of politically persecuted persons, in their constitutions. Since then,...
View ArticleSvenja Goltermann: Perceptions of Interpersonal Violence:
Our understanding of what violence actually is has changed considerably in the second half of the twentieth century. When violence against children and women first became a public and political issue...
View ArticleHannah Skoda: ‘How I long for the good old days’:
The fourteenth century is characterized by a series of profound structural changes. This lecture forms part of a larger monograph project arguing that one of the ways in which people in England,...
View ArticleRound Table: Confronting Histories of Violence and Populism
Round Table: Corinne Fowler, Susan Neiman, Michael Rothberg, and Mark Terkessidis. Chair: Samira Ahmed Organizers: German Historical Institute London in collaboration with the Goethe-Institut London...
View ArticleAmy S. Kaufman: Medievalism, Extremism, and “White History”
The attack on the US Capitol in January 2021 showed right-wing extremists sporting a chaotic and cross-temporal panoply of symbols: from Spartan helmets and Confederate flags to Templar patches, Norse...
View ArticleBarbara Manthe: Writing a History of Right-Wing Terrorism in Post-WWII Germany
Although right-wing terrorism has been a highly relevant issue to German society in recent years, there is still surprisingly little knowledge about its history. This observation applies not only to...
View ArticleTanika Sarkar: The Past in the Present
This lecture discusses the historical pedagogy of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (‘National Volunteer Organisation’), which is the ideological inspiration behind India’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)....
View ArticleStephan Bruhn: Visions of community in an Age of Viking threat
GHIL Featured Research: “Reformer als Wertegemeinschaften. Zur diskursiven Formierung einer sozialen Gruppe im spätangelsächsischen England (ca. 850–1050)” – Stephan Bruhn What do medieval reformer...
View ArticleFabian Klose: The Quest for a New World Order:
The Quest for a New World Order: International Politics Between Visions of Global Governance and Catastrophic Failures in the 1990s - Fabian Klose (Cologne) In this recording of a lecture given in...
View ArticleHannah Ahlheim and Elizabeth Hunter: Sleeping Through the Ages:
First, Elizabeth Hunter discusses tales of wonderful sleepers in seventeenth-century England, who slept for unusual periods of time or sleepwalked and did strange or terrible things. How were these...
View ArticleStefan-Ludwig Hoffmann: Charlotte Beradt and Reinhart Koselleck on Dreaming...
Recently, there has been an uptick of interest in the late Reinhart Koselleck’s theoretical writings. Whenever scholars across the humanities deal with issues of temporality, with present pasts or past...
View ArticleShiru Lim and Avi Lifschitz: Frederick the Great and the Public Sphere
King Frederick II of Prussia enjoys the reputation of a philosopher king and a major author in his own right. But integral to that reputation is his chequered relationship with an increasingly...
View ArticleMaya Caspari and Jane Freeland: Forms, Voices, Networks: Feminism and the Media
The exhibition Forms, Voices, Networks explores the intersections between the growth of mass media and women’s rights movements in a transnational context during the 20th century. Centred on the...
View ArticleChristina Morina: Broken Balance:
In this lecture, Christina Morina discusses the political culture of the ‘Berlin Republic’, which has its roots as much in the era of German division as in the transformative years around 1989. Yet it...
View ArticleMartina Heßler: Flawed Humans, or What Makes Technology Better than Humans:
It is said that to be human is to be flawed, limited, and finite; however, the meaning of ‘flawed’ has changed over time. The lecture argues that in the nineteenth century a new conceptual framework...
View ArticleGurminder K. Bhambra: A Decolonial Project for Europe
There is a disconnection between, on the one hand, Europe regarding colonial history as ‘the past’ and of little consequence to its contemporary self-understanding and, on the other hand, formerly...
View ArticleMaria Cardamone: Captured. 'The Materiality of the Prize Papers' - A...
GHIL Research Fellow for Modern History Ole Münch and PR and Events Officer Kim König speak to photographer Maria Cardamone. Maria has curated an exhibition which is currently on display at the GHIL...
View ArticleMartina Steber and Ole Münch: British composer, conductor, and music...
GHIL Research Fellow for Modern History Ole Münch talks to Martina Steber, Deputy Director of the Leibniz Institute for Contemporary History (IfZ), about her research on the British composer,...
View ArticleMartina Steber: ‘A very English superstar’ :
It has gone largely unnoticed by musicologists and historians that the British composer, conductor, and music entrepreneur John Rutter has become a leading figure in popular music since the 1980s....
View ArticleCarsten Jahnke (Copenhagen): The Hanseatic League as a National Project
Today, the Hanseatic League is anchored in the general consciousness of Germans as the ‘secret superpower’. Around 1800, however, the Göttingen professor Sartorius chose it as the subject of a major...
View ArticleCarsten Jahnke, Mirjam Brusius and Kim König: The Hanseatic League: a ‘secret...
GHIL Research Fellow for Colonial and Global History Mirjam Brusius and PR Officer Kim König speak to Carsten Jahnke (Copenhagen) about his research on the history of the Hanseatic League and how...
View ArticleUte Frevert: The Power of Emotions in German History
Everyone knows from experience that emotions are powerful: they motivate us to act in a certain way, they colour our experiences and shape our memories. But what impact do they have on history? What do...
View ArticleUte Frevert, Ole Münch and Kim König: The influence of emotions on history
How have people experienced emotions in the past and how did their meanings differ from how we experience emotions today? What influence did emotions have on history? GHIL Research Fellow for Modern...
View ArticlePrabhu Mohapatra: A Genealogy of Labour Regulation in India:
When was the employment contract introduced in India? The story of the forging of the Formal Employment Contract in the first decades of the twentieth century, of its tortuous career and eventual...
View ArticlePrabhu Mohapatra, Indra Sengupta and Kim König: The employment contract in...
What is the employment contract? When was it introduced in India? What is the role of Indian labour history within the field of labour history and historical research more generally? GHIL Senior Fellow...
View ArticleDavid Kuchenbuch, Pascale Siegrist and Kim König: The history of globalism...
How did people in the past understand globalism? GHIL Research Fellow for Modern History Pascale Siegrist and PR Officer Kim König speak with David Kuchenbuch about his research on American designer R....
View ArticleDavid Kuchenbuch: Mediating Globalism in the Twentieth Century:
Many scholars have argued that historical concepts of the global are under-researched. In my talk, I will argue that filling this gap will mean taking a closer look at media representing global...
View ArticleBehind the Wire: Exhibition: Internment during the First World War. The...
Talks from the Symposium at the launch event for Behind the Wire, an exhibition on Internment durinf the First World War, held at the German Historical Institute, April-June, 2023. During the First...
View ArticleStefan Hanß, Mirjam Brusius and Kim König: Analysing Renaissance recipes
PR Officer Kim König and Research Fellow for Colonial and Global History Mirjam Brusius talk to Stefan Hanß about his research project which uses the scientific analysis and historical...
View ArticleStefan Hanß: The Scientific Analysis of Renaissance Recipes:
The ‘material Renaissance’, historians have argued, was an age of experimentation, and recipes were at the heart of this cultural movement. New collaborations between the humanities and the sciences...
View ArticlePatrick Anthony: Terrestrial Enlightenment:
Some scholars and scientists identify the Enlightenment as an inflection point in the Anthropocene, a geological age in which humans act as a planetary force. My talk suggests that this inflection...
View ArticlePatrick Anthony, Mirjam Brusius and Kim König: Climate Crises and Politics in...
Why was the Enlightenment a turning point in the way in which humans think about climate? In what way did climate catastrophes affect revolutions and vice versa? How did climate politics emerge during...
View ArticleJanaki Nair, Indra Sengupta and Kim König: The history of schooling in...
How can we unpack the history of schooling in colonial India by looking beyond official records of success and failure? How did the classroom in the Princely State of Mysore become a place where...
View ArticleJanaki Nair: The Classroom as Sensorium:
How was the hand to be guided, the eye to be trained, the senses sharpened in preparing the child for an adult world? In princely Mysore in southern India, the missionaries, who took the initial steps...
View ArticleSumathi Ramaswamy: Imagining India in the Empire of Science
This podcast episode is a recording of the inaugural Thyssen Lecture, given by Sumathi Ramaswamy, and organized by the Fritz Thyssen Foundation in cooperation with the GHIL. Drawing inspiration from...
View ArticleAwadhendra Sharan: India’s Atmospheric Modernity:
Around the mid nineteenth century, air pollution began to be discussed in India, especially in its largest cities, Calcutta and Bombay. The concern was with black smoke and the impact that this had on...
View ArticleAwadhendra Sharan, Indra Sengupta and Kim König: Pollution and the modern city:
How have India's colonial past and its life as a postcolonial nation state shaped the history of climate change, particulate matter, and germs and viruses in the region? What is the relationship...
View ArticleRegina Toepfer: Homer’s Heroes in Early Modern Germany:
In this lecture Regina Toepfer will present her concept of translational anthropology and show how philological comparisons can reveal patterns of thought, systems of knowledge, and values held by...
View ArticleKokou Azamede, Mirjam Brusius and Kim König: The restitution debate in Togo
The issue of restitution is an ongoing topic of public debate in both European and African societies. In this GHIL podcast interview, GHIL Fellow for Colonial and Global History Mirjam Brusius and PR...
View ArticleKokou Azamede: The Perception of Colonial Cultural Goods and Human Remains...
The issue of restitution continues to animate public debate in both European and African societies. The search for ways and means to present the problem and to involve communities is becoming a...
View ArticleClare Anderson: Convicts, Creolization and Cosmopolitanism:
Between the late eighteenth and mid-twentieth centuries, the British transported over a quarter of a million convicts to colonies and settlements including in Australia, the Andaman Islands, Indian...
View ArticleNina Verheyen: Global Connections and Personal Achievements:
Within a few decades, people in Imperial Germany witnessed a dramatic rise in global exchange, as well as an increased public interest in personal achievement. Work performance, intelligence, sporting...
View ArticleNina Verheyen, Mirjam Brusius and Kim König: Global rankings:
Why did people in Imperial Germany became increasingly interested in their personal performance? Was there a link between global entanglements of Imperial Germany on the one hand and a rise in personal...
View ArticlePhilipp Rössner: Peasants, Wars, and Evil Coins:
The ‘Great German Peasant War’ of 1524–6 has quietly slipped off the historian’s agenda. Structural-materialist interpretations have waned since the fall of the Iron Curtain, giving rise to several...
View ArticlePhilipp Rössner, Marcus Meer and Kim König: Bad pennies and revolting peasants:
Money doesn’t stink – or so the famous phrase goes. So, what did peasants in the Middle Ages mean when they complained about bad coin? Can a focus on monetary issues shed new light on the Peasants'...
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