GHI Research Projects

The German Historical Institute’s work is at the forefront of international historical and interdisciplinary research and covers a broad geographic, methodological, and thematic spectrum. The GHI’s research agenda is international and includes German, European, and American history as well as comparative and transnational history. The Institute’s research projects also represent the remarkable diversity of approaches that has come to characterize the field of history in recent decades – including political, economic, social, cultural, gender, religious, environmental, and legal history. Current foci of GHI research include the history of knowledge and digital history, as well as the subject areas “religion and ethnicity” and “space and boundaries.”

GHI research in transnational and comparative history includes several collaborative research projects (please see below). The research projects of GHI research fellows fit into four broad areas: transnational and comparative history, global history, American history, and German history. 

Collaborative Research Projects

• German History in Documents and Image (GHDI)
  Kelly McCullough
• German History Intersections
  Kelly McCullough, Insa Kummer
• Innovation through Tradition: Jewish Educational Media and Cultural Transformation in the Face of Modernity
  Simone Lässig and Zohar Shavit

Staff Research Projects

American History

• Risks Will Be Taken: Insurance and the Making of Postcolonial America, 1770-1840
  Elisabeth Engel
• The New Role of Science in American Society: Stem Cell Debates since 1998
  Axel Jansen
• Land of Dollars: Money in the Minds of American Immigrants, 1870–1930
  Atiba Pertilla
• Children by Choice? The Entanglements of the American Planned Parenthood Federation and the West German Pro Familia
  Claudia Roesch

German History

• The Politics of Punishment: German Penal Reform, 1880-1970
  Richard F. Wetzell

History of Knowledge

• Educating the "Man," the "Jew" and the "Citizen": Transformations in Social Norms and Values in Nineteenth-Century Jewish Educational Media
  Kerstin von der Krone
• Religious Patterns of Social Practice: Discourses on "Civil Improvement," Translations of Middle-Class Culture, and the Invocation of Jewish Traditions in Jewish Textbooks and Sermons of the Early 19th Century
  Simone Lässig

Transnational/Comparative History

• Realms of Sociability? Empires and Freemasons in the Atlantic World (circa 1770s-1850s)
  Jan C. Jansen
• Faces of Fear: Anti-Asian Sentiments from a Global Perspective
  Sören Urbansky

Other Projects

• Medieval History: An Introduction for University Students
  (in cooperation with the University of Augsburg)