History of Mobilities & Migration

The GHI’s longstanding engagement with the migration of German speakers to North America from the seventeenth century to the present is the foundation for the broader program on the history of migration and mobility that has developed at the institute since 2015. Several GHI-supported projects look beyond the flows of European migrants across the Atlantic and analyze migrant groups and receiving societies around the world, including in a transpacific and inter-American perspective. Particular attention is given to diasporic communities, migrants’ agency and networks, and comparative research on the social and cultural integration of migrants.

The research at the institute also places a focus on spatial mobility and its social impacts and asymmetries by bringing together projects on migration with colleagues working on different mobile groups, objects, information, or ideas. The notion of multiple and uneven mobilities provides the opportunity to explore global and transregional entanglements and ruptures, continuities and disconnections. The conference series and research network “In Global Transit” combines the history of forced migration and mobility studies to explore the spatialities and temporalities of escape trajectories. Current GHI research projects on traffic networks investigate the materiality of infrastructure and how complex networks were managed locally.

The GHI’s research focus on mobilities and migration is closely linked to its established program in the history of knowledge. The roles of migrants as producers and transmitters of distinctive bodies of knowledge is the focus of the “Migrant Knowledge” initiative at the GHI’s Pacific Regional Office. The collaborative project "Migrant Connections" draws on the tools of digital history to explore the ways German emigrants and their family and friends at home created or dismissed  transnational spaces of communication and knowledge circulation.

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

Team


Isabel Richter

Deputy Director
Pacific Office of the German Historical Institute Washington
Institute of European Studies | University of California, Berkeley | 249 Philosophy Hall | Berkeley, CA 94720-2316
Phone +1.202.552.8936

richter@ghi-dc.orgRead on

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.

Migrant Connections

Migrant Connections is a digital research infrastructure for historical research on German migration to the United States in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Events & Conferences


Jun 24, 2025

Lost Knowledge and Migration

Online Panel Discussion | Speakers: Eliyana R. Adler (Binghamton University), Susanne Korbel (University of Graz), Angelika Laumer (University of Bonn) and Matteo Sartori (Universidad de Concepción); Moderators: Philipp Strobl (University of Vienna) and Swen Steinberg (GHI Washington / Queen's University)

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Jun 25, 2025

Germans in the Asia-Pacific Region: (Post) Colonial Entanglements, Conflicts and Perceptions in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries

Conference in Flinders University (city campus), Adelaide, South Australia | Conveners: Matthew Fitzpatrick (Flinders University), Simone Lässig (GHI Washington), Isabel Richter (GHI Washington Pacific Office at UC Berkeley)

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Jul 07, 2025

Historicizing the Refugee Experience, 17th–21st Centuries

Fifth Annual International Seminar in Historical Refugee Studies in Berkeley, CA | Organized by University of Tübingen (UT), the German Historical Institute in Washington (GHI) and the American Historical Association (AHA)

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Sep 10, 2025

Universities and the Public Good: Research, Education, and Democracy since 1945

Workshop and Young Scholars Forum at Herrenhausen Palace, Hanover, Germany | Conveners: Charles Dorn (Bowdoin College, Maine), Axel Jansen (German Historical Institute Washington), Charlotte Lerg (Amerika-Institut, LMU München), Till van Rahden (Centre canadien d’études allemandes et européennes, Université de Montréal), and Richard F. Wetzell (German Historical Institute Washington)

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Sep 25, 2025

Beyond Refuge: Legacies of Forced Migration and Transit in Post-1945 History

Roundtable at the 49th annual conference of the German Studies Association, Arlington, VA | Conveners: Swen Steinberg (GHI Washington / Queen's University) and Rebekka Grossmann (Leiden University)

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Sep 29, 2025

Food, Migration, and Belonging in 20th Century European History

Conference at German Historical Institute | Pacific Office at UC Berkeley | Conveners: Maren Möhring (University of Leipzig), Isabel Richter (GHI Washington Pacific Office at UC Berkeley)

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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


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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Bulletin 70 (Fall 2022)

Forum: Rethinking Cross-Border Connections

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Latest News


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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Opportunities

Intern at the German Historical Institute

Deadline: July 31, 2025 | The GHI Internship Program gives students of history, political science, public relations, and public administration at…

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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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Alumni

Interview with Postdoctoral Visiting Fellow Sarah Frenking

We recently caught up with Sarah Frenking, one of our Visiting Fellows, who will be leaving us at the end of April. We sat down with her to discuss…

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New Publication

Fall 2024 Bulletin (74) issue published and available for download

The latest issue of the Bulletin is now available online for download as well as in print.

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