Department II: Knowledge – Economy – Politics

Head of Department: Prof. Dr. Dr. Rüdiger Graf

The research unit analyzes the constitution of economic and political processes in the 20th and 21st centuries as well as the relation between them. Within contemporary history as a whole, most research projects focus on the period since the 1970s from an inter- and transnational perspective. This includes large-scale histories of economic transformations, analyses of national and international political processes, as well as the history of energy and the environment. In particular, we examine changes in the conceptual and epistemic orders which structure the fields of politics, the economy, and their mutual interaction.