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History of Migration & Mobility

The GHI’s longstanding engagement with the migration of German speakers to North America is the basis for a broader research program on the history of migration and mobility. Research at the Institute examines migrant and diasporic communities, their agency across local, national, and global scales, and the social and cultural dynamics of integration. Projects in this research area also place a focus on spatial mobility (or lack thereof) and its social impacts and asymmetries by linking research on migration with studies of other mobile groups, objects, and ideas. The Institute’s blog, Migration and Mobility, showcases new historical research in the field, including work that explores transit as a stage of migration. The collaborative digital project Migrant Connections traces how German emigrants and their networks created transnational systems of communication and knowledge exchange.

Photo Credit: El Shatt, UNRRA Refugee Camp, 1944. Otto Gilmore/FSA/OWI, Library of Congress.

Team

Projects

In Global Transit

In Global Transit currently consists of two separate pillars: a conference series and resulting research network and individual projects from GHI research staff.

Hungarian Refugee Students, Knowledge and Canadian Forestry

Swen Steinberg

Events & Conferences

Nov 20, 2025

The German Audience for the U.S. Declaration of Independence

Online Lecture on Zoom | Speaker: Emily Sneff

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Apr 23, 2026

Rebuild or Retreat? Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Climate Migration and Mobility in the Global North

Conference at GHI Washington | Conveners: Jana Dunz-Keck (GHI Washington) and Sarah Beringer (GHI Washington), Simon Richter (University of Pennsylvania), Andreas Hübner (Kiel University), Max Gruenig (POCACITO Network and Georgetown University, BMW Center for German and European Studies), and Brendan O’Donnell (POCACITO Network and Heinrich Böll Foundation)

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Publications

Bulletin 75 (Spring 2025)

Forum: Concrete Dreams: The Built Environment and Human Behavior in Europe’s Twentieth Century

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Christina Brauner, Renate Dürr, Philip Hahn, Anne Sophie Overkamp, Simon Siemianowski, eds.

Encountering the Global in Early Modern Germany: Microhistories of Mobility, Materiality, and Belonging

Studies in German History. Vol. 30. New York: Berghahn Books, 2025.

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Bulletin 74 (Fall 2024)

Forum: European and Global Perspectives on Social Democracy and State Violence

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Michelle Lynn Kahn

Foreign in Two Homelands: Racism, Return Migration, and Turkish-German History

Publications of the German Historical Institute. Cambridge University Press, 2024.

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Bulletin 73 (Spring 2024)

Forum: Antisemitism and Sexualities

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Jan C. Jansen & Kirsten McKenzie, eds.

Mobility and Coercion in an Age of Wars and Revolutions

Publications of the German Historical Institute. Cambridge University Press, 2024.

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Bulletin 72 (Fall 2023)

Forum: The German Treatment of Soviet Prisoners of War During The Second World War

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all publications

Latest News

West Coast Germanists' Workshop

German History at the Crossroads? New Narratives, Perspectives and Approaches

Deadline: November 30, 2025 (deadline extended) | Eighth West Coast Germanists’ Workshop at University of Colorado Boulder | March 6 – 7, 2026

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Fellowship

Visiting Fellowships at the GHI

Deadline: January 12, 2026 | The GHI is now accepting applications for its 2026-2027 visiting fellow program for European and North American scholars…

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Fellowship

GHI Fellowships at the Horner Library

Deadline: March 1, 2026 | Together with the German Society of Pennsylvania, the GHI sponsors two to four fellowships of up to four weeks for research…

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Press Release

German Historical Institute Receives Volkswagen Stiftung Grant for AI-Based Research

The German Historical Institute Washington has received a generous grant from the Volkswagen Stiftung’s “Open Up – New Research Spaces for the…

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Podcast

New podcast miniseries "The Ends of War" launched by Max Weber Stiftung

The new miniseries features GHI researchers Anna Carolin Augustin and Simone Lässig along with other MWS researchers to discuss the aftermath(s) of…

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