German Historical Institute Washington DC receives Volkswagen Foundation Grant for its Branch Office GHI West in Berkeley

The German Historical Institute Washington DC (GHI) has received a research grant of €243,000 from the Volkswagen Foundation, one of Germany’s most important non-profit foundations. The grant will finance three “Tandem Fellowships” in the history of knowledge and migration – each of which will pair a scholar from North America with a colleague from Europe. It consequently supports the structural formation of the GHI’s new West Coast office, GHI West, at the University of California, Berkeley.

The GHI’s new outpost in California, which officially opened in February, is building a “Knowledge in Transit Research Network” that will bring together scholars working at the intersection of migration history and the history of knowledge. The postdoctoral Tandem Fellows will spend one academic year in Berkeley and will support the GHI West staff in developing the Knowledge in Transit Research Network. In the first year of the program, the fellows will also assist in organizing an exploratory workshop for the network, which is also funded through the Volkswagen Foundation grant.

“I am very grateful for the Volkswagen Foundation’s support for our branch office, GHI West,” said Simone Lässig, Director of the German Historical Institute Washington DC. “The grant will enable us to combine the development of this new research focus with an innovative format that simultaneously supports young scholars and international scholarly networking. The grant from the Volkswagen Foundation will thus be a crucial contribution toward the innovative research infrastructure we are creating at GHI West”.

The Knowledge in Transit Research Network at GHI West is part of the strategic development initiative of the Max-Weber-Stiftung, the governing body of the GHI Washington and its nine sister institutes around the world. It will also raise the profile of the GHI Washington DC, which, under Director Simone Lässig, has placed the history of knowledge, along with digital history, at the center of its activities. Through targeted cooperation with other institutions in North America and around the world, GHI West will give new impulse to international and interdisciplinary exchange in research on migration, not least by facilitating dialogue between European and North American scholars and their colleagues in Latin America and the Asian Pacific region. A central focus for the research network will be migrants as conveyors and producers of knowledge. Special attention will be given to the role of migrant children and young people as mediators or “translators” between cultures. 

For further information, contact:

Dr. Sarah Beringer
Research and Press Coordinator
German Historical Institute Washington
1607 New Hampshire A
ve NW
Washington, DC 20009Phone +1 202 387-3355
beringer@ghi-dc.org