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About Us

Advancing Research | Supporting Scholars | Building Networks

The German Historical Institute Washington (GHI) is a center for advanced historical research. Working with junior and senior scholars around the world, the GHI facilitates dialogue and collaboration across national and disciplinary boundaries.
 

Advancing Research The GHI promotes research in three core fields: German/European and Jewish history, History of the Americas and transatlantic history, and global and transregional history. It also has thematic concentrations—currently in three additional  fields: the history of knowledge, digital history, and the history of migration.
 

Supporting Scholars The GHI works to enable scholars to conduct research and share their findings with their colleagues. It awards approximately 30 short-term fellowships (three to six months) annually to doctoral students and post-doctoral scholars for archival research in North America. It also offers a limited number of long-term residential fellowships (for up to one year), including binational tandem fellowships, in its core fields and thematic concentrations. GHI conferences, workshops, and seminars, often organized in cooperation with partner institutions in Europe and North America, provide scholars with a forum to present their research and engage in critical exchange.
 

Building Networks The GHI’s programs rest on the assumption that communication is as important as research in advancing historical understanding. Through its conferences and workshops, its print publications, and its digital projects and initiatives, the GHI fosters scholarly exchange and collaboration. It works closely with partner institutions and organizations to provide scholars from around the world with the opportunity to extend their professional networks and build professional relationships across borders. 

»The GHI occupies a unique and valuable space in the landscape of historical scholarship in the United States. It builds and sustains vital connections between the German academic community and a Washington area public interested in historical scholarship on a wide variety of topics. Its fellowships and programs for early career scholars encourage and nourish robust transatlantic dialogue linking German scholarship to academic communities across the United States.«

James Grossman, Executive Director, American Historical Association

»The German Historical Institute is a civic treasure, a vibrant institution that enriches the intellectual life of Washington, DC, with its wide-ranging and rigorous study of the past. Its public programs are consistently stimulating and enlightening. We owe the institute and its sponsors a debt of gratitude.«

Dane Kennedy, Director, National History Center

»Since 1987 the GHI Washington has been a vital - indeed indispensable - partner of the German Studies Association, the largest academic association of its sort in the world. Through its work, the GHI affords scholars from around the world important opportunities for networking and intellectual collaboration.«

David Barclay, Director, German Studies Association

»Das DHI in Washington–und es ist zu wünschen, dass die neue „Filiale” in Berkeley in seine Fußstapfen tritt–ist zu einem Leuchtturm geworden, der auch über den Atlantik gen Deutschland und Europa strahlt. Fast alle in Deutschland lehrenden und mit einem interessanten Forschungsprofil versehenen Historikerinnen und Historiker sind Gäste des Instituts gewesen, haben eine Annual Lecture gehalten oder an einer Konferenz teilgenommen und sich dort mit amerikanischen und europäischen Kollegen ausgetauscht.«

Ute Frevert, Managing Director, Max Planck Institute for Human Development

History of the GHI

The GHI was established in 1987 as an independent non-profit foundation. Since 2002 it has been part of the Max Weber Stiftung - Deutsche Geisteswissenschaftliche Institute im Ausland (Max Weber Foundation - International Humanities), a public-law foundation funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, which coordinates an international network of humanities institutes in Rome (established in 1888), Paris (1958), Beirut (1961), London (1976), Tokyo (1988), Warsaw (1993), Moscow (2005), Istanbul (2009), and Delhi (2021). While the GHI's basic operating budget comes from the Max Weber Foundation, special programs and initiatives are funded by grants from German and American foundations.

 

To learn more about GHI Washington's history, see:

The German Historical Institute in Washington, 1987-2012: A Short HistoryWashington's Second Blair House: 1607 New Hampshire Avenue, an Illustrated History

Equal Opportunity Policy

The GHI is an equal opportunity employer and supports the equal treatment of men and women and strives to offer an attractive workplace for disabled persons and underrepresented minorities.

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Organizational Chart

The GHI team is a diverse set of employees who help build the Institute’s wide-ranging research profile and contribute to its outstanding record of service to the scholarly community on both sides of the Atlantic.

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