Advancing Research  The German Historical Institute Washington (GHI) advances historical scholarship through individual and collaborative projects, conferences, and fellowships that foster dialogue across disciplines, regions, and generations of scholars. Its research program combines long-standing fields of expertise with new thematic concentrations, offering a flexible framework that encourages both continuity and innovation.

At its core, the GHI’s research program focuses on German, European, and Jewish History, the History of the Americas and Transatlantic History, and the History of Migration & Mobility. These broad fields have evolved in conversation with global and transnational approaches, creating space for new questions, methodologies, and digital tools. The Institute’s digital projects, such as the award-winning primary-source collection German History in Documents and Images and German History Intersections, reflect this commitment to open-access scholarship and to connecting academic communities in North America, Europe, and beyond. A new focus centers on the history of empires and their legacies in a post-imperial world.

The GHI’s Pacific Office in Berkeley further expands this program through initiatives that connect the Atlantic and Pacific worlds, exploring inter-American, transpacific, and global entanglements. Across all its research areas, the Institute promotes innovative methodologies, from transnational and global history to digital and interdisciplinary approaches, fostering sustained reflection on how the past continues to shape the present.