Research Projects

Research project
The project contributes to the current discussion on Nazi-looted art and the restitution of cultural property, shedding new light on their historical context. In terms of methodology, the project connects the history of redress for Nazi injustices with the history of materialities, legal history, and the history of art after 1945.

Research project
funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG)
Taking quinine, an alkaloid used as an antimalarial, cardiac and stimulant, and the raw material cinchona bark, which is necessary for its production, as an example, the project writes a political history of the pharmaceutical industry in the “Global South” in the age of decolonization. 

PhD project
The project elucidates this tactical use of human rights rhetoric by the KMR and the East German state through the examination of multiple, overlapping historical trajectories during this period including decolonization, increasing global engagement by the GDR, and growing debate and output on human rights from the UN in the form of declarations and covenants. 

Associated research project 
The project will explore the emergence, flourishing, and decline of a non-violent revolutionary frame that grew to dominate global discourse about change for several decades. Beginning with the Carnation Revolution in Portugal this era came to an abrupt end with the EuroMaidan Revolution in Ukraine, along with the violent repression of the Arab Spring in Egypt and the Umbrella Revolution in Hong Kong. 

Research project
Project leaders: Jutta Braun/Winfried Süß
Project editor: Jaromír Balcar
Funded by the Albert Einstein Science Park Association
This project examines the history of the natural science research institutions located on Potsdam’s Telegrafenberg, their predecessors, and the history of the Babelsberg Observatory from 1930 to 1950 with a focus on the Nazi dictatorship. Across the two political turning points of 1933 and 1945, the study examines continuities and breaks in terms of personnel, organization, and epistemology.

Dissertationsprojekt
Projektleitung: Priv.-Doz. Dr. Winfried Süß
Das Forschungsprojekt untersucht, wie neue Schlüsseltechnologien Anforderungen, Risiken und Ungleichheitsmuster in der Arbeitswelt verändert und damit sozialpolitische Herausforderungen geschaffen haben. Im Zentrum stehen Prozesse der Automatisierung, Robotisierung und Digitalisierung.

Book project
Das Projekt untersucht die gesellschaftliche Auseinandersetzung mit Sextourismus aus der Bundesrepublik in Regionen des Globalen Südens, v.a. Südostasien, der sich seit den späten 1960er Jahren etablierte.

Research project
In diesem Projekt wird untersucht, wie Akteurinnen der Frauenbewegungen im 20. Jahrhundert Gerichte zu politischen Infrastrukturen machten: zu Orten der Aushandlung von Recht, staatlicher Macht und gesellschaftlichen Geschlechterverhältnissen sowie zu Ressourcen für den von ihnen angestrebten gesellschaftlichen Wandel.

Forschungsprojekt 
Das Projekt untersucht die Entwicklung anthroposophisch geprägter Unternehmen in Deutschland im 20. Jahrhundert. Im Mittelpunkt stehen Unternehmen wie Weleda, Alnatura, dm-drogerie markt oder Demeter, die aus dem anthroposophischen Milieu hervorgegangen sind oder bis heute eng mit ihm verbunden bleiben.

Research project
This project explores the development of communal identity and ties in (West) Germany’s transgender population in the period between the end of the Second World War and the fall of the Berlin Wall and the eve of German Reunification. 

Exhibition Project
Exploring migration stories strengthens democracy. This exhibition will showcase Mihaly 'Miša' Moldvay’s photos of labour migration to Germany from the 1970s and 1980s, including female, artistic, and children’s perspectives. A graphic novel-style film by Bettina Bexte provide additional context.

Research project
This subproject reconstructs the history of gas stations in Western Europe since the 1950s, locating them within a broader context of expanding international oil policies that form the backdrop to the everyday life of their users. It focuses on a comparative analysis of West Germany and Italy,

PhD project 
The project examines how automobile-based – and thus energy-intensive – lifestyles spread in the Federal Republic of Germany between 1950 and 2000 and, at the same time, came under criticism in the wake of debates on environmental pollution and climate change.

Praxisprojekt
des Lernorts Keibelstraße in Kooperation mit dem ZZF und Studierenden des Masterstudiengangs Public History an der Freien Universität Berlin 
Das Projekt widmet sich einem bislang wenig erforschten Kapitel der jüngsten Geschichte: den erzwungenen Enden von Migration in der DDR und den 1990er Jahren im vereinten Deutschland. Im Fokus steht die Geschichte der Abschiebehaft am Lernort Keibelstraße und die Lebensrealitäten der betroffenen Migrant*innen in den 1980er- und 1990er Jahren.

PhD project
The subproject examines the accommodation of parked cars in Western European cities since the breakthrough of mass motorization in the 1950s. In particular, the project asks how mass motorization and the associated space requirements of parked vehicles have shaped local life worlds, everyday practices and spatial conflicts.

Exhibition project
Project management: Jutta Braun
Funded by the Federal Foundation for the Reappraisal of the SED Dictatorship
Project duration: 2026
The planned exhibition focuses on Soviet dominance and political control of ballet in the GDR and explores the biographies of graduates who achieved international fame. It also questions the relevance of high culture in the political crises of the present day.

Exhibition project
Project management: Jutta Braun and Hanno Hochmuth
Duration: 2026
To mark the upcoming FIBA Women's Basketball World Cup 2026 in Berlin, ZZF Potsdam will be working with partners to shed light on the history of this popular sport. Starting in September 2026, a multimedia exhibition at the tournament venues will showcase the political and social dimensions of basketball, covering sports policy, performance, and lifestyle.
 

PhD project
Situated at the intersection of migration history, the history of racism, and protest history, the project also advances the analysis of power relations and social inequality.

Research project
The project will explore the routine of the KGB’s work, as well as the mechanisms and instruments of social control that directly or indirectly affected “average” Soviet citizens in the course of everyday life. The focus is on the Soviet secret police in the period beginning with the end of the Brezhnev’s rule through Gorbachev’s perestroika until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. 

Research Project
This project examines why Lviv emerged as a driving force of political and cultural transformation in the late Soviet period. Focusing on the years 1986–1994, it reconstructs how social mobilization, cultural self-assertion, and new forms of urban public life intertwined during perebudova. By offering a microhistorical perspective, the study sheds new light on the local dynamics that shaped the emergence of independent Ukraine.

Joint project
Duration: January 2025 to December 2029
Project funding: Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Staff Exchanges 
Project partners: Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines (lead partner) 
In an extremely tense international context where European democracies are being weakened and even called into question, it is crucial to emphasise the importance of preserving and promoting the European cultural heritage represented by archives of political and social engagement. The project aspires to define the role and importance of collecting, archiving and promoting documents, objects and data in order to contribute to a renewed European history of social and political dissent from the beginning of the 19th century to the present day.

PhD project
in the project Cooling the Global South: Technology, Society, and Thermal Regulation in the Twentieth Century (Emmy Noether-Programme der DFG)
This project examines the international efforts to provide housing in Latin America at the intersection of architectural, environmental, and development history between the 1940s and 1970s.

PhD project
This project explores the intersections of art, spirituality, and altered states of consciousness in post-Soviet Ukraine. It examines how the discovery and use of psychedelic substances among artists of the Ukrainian New Wave in the 1990s shaped a unique aesthetic of transgression, introspection, and spiritual experimentation.

Research project
in the Leibniz-Professorinnen-Programm von Juliane Fürst „Nuclear Reaction on the Khreshchatyk: Ukrainian Society and its Path from Perebudova to Decoloniality, 1986-1994“
Was geschieht mit einem der bekanntesten Symbole der Sowjetunion, wenn das Imperium zerfällt? Das Projekt widmet sich dem legendären Pionierlager Artek auf der Krim – einem Ort, der über Jahrzehnte als Inbegriff sowjetischer Zukunftsversprechen galt. Hier sollten Kinder die sozialistische Gesellschaft von morgen bereits im Kleinen erleben.

Research project
This project shifts focus to the practices and behaviors at far-right public events to explain far-right mobilization across Western Europe in 1951-1981, a period of denazification and stigmatization of the far right.

Associated Research project
Supported by the Hans und Berthold Finkelstein Stiftung 

The study analyzes the margins of maneuver in which ter Meer operated as a manager  – shaped by drastic breaks and long-lasting continuities – under changing political, economic, and military conditions in the German Empire, the Weimar Republic, the Nazi regime, and the Federal Republic.

PhD project
The double failure of Russian liberalism - after 1905 and after 1991 - calls for a differentiated historical explanation. Using selected actors from three age cohorts, it systematically examines how Russian liberals defined themselves, what ideas guided them and why they ultimately failed with their project of liberalizing the state and politics. 

Research project
Lethal intimate partner violence is currently the subject of increasing political debate. However, it has a long history that has until now been largely unexplored by historians. The proposed research project uses in-depth case studies and selected time periods to examine the transformation of lethal intimate partner violence in Germany during the long 20th century.

PhD project
as part of the Competence Network Interdisciplinary Ukraine Studies (KIU)
Supervisor of this project: Prof. Dr. Jan C. Behrends
This project examines how Belgian and Dutch economic and diplomatic actors perceived and engaged with the industrial Donbas, Kryvyi Rih, and Black Sea littoral, and how these commercial and industrial entanglements shaped their responses as the region became politically contested and claimed as Ukrainian national space.

PhD project
This project examines the emergence of Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) from the mid 1970s to the mid 1990s at the intersection of political history, social history and the history of science. 

Research project
in the Leibniz-Professorinnen-Programm von Juliane Fürst „Nuclear Reaction on the Khreshchatyk: Ukrainian Society and its Path from Perebudova to Decoloniality, 1986-1994“
Das Projekt rekonstruiert die intellektuelle Vorbereitung der polnisch-ukrainischen Annäherung im Exil, wie sie dann in den 1980er Jahren durch Solidarność und Perebudova (ukrainisch für Perestroika) auch innerhalb Polens und der Ukraine politisch wirksam wurde. Es analysiert, warum in den polnisch-ukrainischen Beziehungen ein Wandel gelang, der in den russisch-ukrainischen Beziehungen scheiterte. 

PhD project
 The project thus pursues the question of when and under what conditions a majority-supporting course toward deeper monetary integration emerged -- and of what importance economic arguments were.

Research project
Funded by the MSCA4Ukraine Postdoctoral Fellowship
The project disentangles the many strands that make up the history of Ukrainian fashion production, products and consumption, casting Ukrainian fashion as a colonizing as well as colonized actor within the Soviet Union and as an agent of Ukrainianness acting on a global stage.

Research poject
as part of the Leibniz Women Professors Program by ZZF department head Juliane Fürst
This project analyses the path from perebudova (the Ukrainian word for perestroika) to decoloniality in the field of sport as an intriguing and enlightening prism through which to understand broader social and political changes on the way to Ukrainian independence. 
The project is a part of the Leibniz Women Professors Program by ZZF department head Juliane Fürst.

Research project
as part of the joint project "The Radical Right in Germany, 1945-2000"
The project aims to analyse racist violence in the GDR from a social and cultural-historical perspective.

PhD project
of the DFG Research Unit “Military Cultures of Violence
This project focuses on the emergence and development of the Polish army from the beginning of the First World War to the May Putsch in 1926. The study concentrates on the culture of military violence that the Polish army developed against the backdrop of the First World War, the collapse of the empires and the formation of the Polish state.

PhD project
Part of the collaborative research project “Where the Rich Live: Mapping Villa Neigh-borhoods and Cultures of Wealth in Germany’s Long 20th Century (RichMap),” conducted in partnership with the IRS in Erkner
Supervision: Prof. Dr. Frank Bösch (ZZF Potsdam), PD Dr. Eva Maria Gajek (IRS Erkner)

The research aims to trace the evolution of social inequality and cultural differentiation, contributing to wealth studies in Germany. 

PhD project
as part of the joint project "The Radical Right in Germany, 1945-2000"
The project explores the pogrom in Rostock-Lichtenhagen in 1992 using Saul Friedländer's "integrated history" and methods from the field of pogrom and violence research.

PhD Project
Part of the project "The Radical Right in Germany, 1945-2000" 
A military masculine ideal in the radical right is taken for granted. But what other roles and liberties were there for right-wing men in the second half of the 20th century? These and other questions have not yet been researched in contemporary history. The project will examine them using a praxeological approach.

Assoziiertes Forschungsprojekt
Girly Business zeichnet die weitgehend unterschätzte soziokulturelle Geschichte von klassischen Instrumentalistinnen nach, ausgehend von der Entwicklung der Massenmedien und dem Wandel der gesellschaftlichen Normen in Bezug auf Weiblichkeit, Unabhängigkeit und Selbstbestimmung. 

Research project

The German-German comparison demarcates the political elements of energy knowledge by comparing how this field was created and disseminated in both a planned economy system with a state-controlled public sphere and a liberal economic order.

Research project
The project traces historically the fundamental change in security culture since the 1990s. It focuses on the question of how the modern promise of being able to plan for the future and prevent dangers was replaced by a security policy thinking and action that assumed that one could only prepare for the (inevitable) disasters that would occur, but not prevent them.

Bilateral Israeli-German cooperation project 
of the Leibniz Centre for Contemporary History Potsdam (Jan C. Behrends), Tel Aviv University (Scott Ury) and The Hebrew University of Jerusalem/Leonid Nevzlin Research Center for Russian and East European Jewry (Semion Goldin) 
This project examines the public debates about the memory and image of “the Jews” in Poland, Lithuania and Ukraine. It asks what role the discussions in this region played in the collective memory and in the historical debates in the different periods: late communism (1980-1989), post-communism (1989-2004) and populist nationalism (2004-2020). 

PhD project
Part of the project "The Radical Right in Germany, 1945-2000"
The project analyses how right-wing organizations and groups in the GDR opposition communicated about the GDR, which ideological fragments were emphasized and what power of action and impact they were able to develop.

Research Project
Project Management: Jutta Braun (ZZF) in collaboration with Berno Bahro (University of Potsdam), Partner: Center for German Sports History
In light of the upcoming 20th anniversary of the merger of the German Sports Federation (DSB) and the National Olympic Committee (NOK) to form the DOSB (German Olympic Sports Confederation) in 2006, this project examines the legacy of Nazism in organized sports. The project aims to analyze both formal and substantive aspects of this legacy and publish its findings in a monograph. 

Research project
The project studies the journalists and entrepreneurs setting up these and similar agencies in order to ask what strategies they used in order to make their new kinds of news convincing to new audiences.

Exhibition project/Permanent exhibition (Berlin) 
Helmut Kohl's 16-year reign (1982-1998) not only saw German reunification, but also the Schengen Agreement, the Maastricht Treaty and the introduction of the euro, which set the course for European integration. 
The exhibition tells the tense phase of German and European contemporary history in the 1980s and 1990s from an East and West German perspective.

Forschungsprojekt
Das Projekt untersucht den individuellen und gesellschaftlichen Umgang mit der Diskrepanz zwischen normativen Ansprüchen und tatsächlichen Praktiken.

PhD Project
part of the ERC Project “Perestroika from Below”
The project examines how the socio-political context of late-Soviet Leningrad prepared the ground for the monument protection activism revived by Perestroika.

Research project
Part of the Leibniz-Verbundvorhaben „Digital Inequalities“ 
The project analyses how new computer experts in West Germany challenged established corporate hierarchies, procedures and work processes and thus constituted themselves as a new class between the 1970s and 1990s.

Postdoctoral project
The project explores the history of air routes as escape routes. Focusing on the case of Germany, it analyzes how commercial air travel shaped refugee and asylum migration. It traces these developments from the early days of aviation and the flight from National Socialism in the 1930s to more recent South-to-North migration patterns in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

Research project

Based on oral history interviews in two industrial regions (Northern France, and the German Ruhr valley), the project aims at understanding the changing perceptions of political, social, and economic belonging at a moment when the inhabitants of these industrial areas lost the traditional focal point of their identity, namely work in the coal and steel industries. 

This project explores the role of Germany in the rise of global arms and narcotics trafficking and the efforts to contain these illicit trades from the Kaiserreich to the Nazi Era.

PhD project
This project focuses on transformations of work processes in companies of the West German chemical industry against the backdrop of technological developments such as automation and digitalization, as well as the growing significance of environmental concerns.

PhD project
as part of the DFG-funded Collaborative Research Center / SFB 1604 “Production of Migration”
Project management: Isabella Löhr (ZZF Potsdam) und Jochen Oltmer (Universität Osnabrück)
The increasing significance of flight and asylum in both the public and political spheres of the GDR, the ›old‹ Federal Republic and the unified Germany led to an increased social production and differentiation of flight-related figures, who are at the center of this project.

Leibniz-Lab
Project management: Dr. Hanno Hochmuth
The Leibniz Lab "Upheavals and Transformations" will bring together, discuss and communicate the research of 28 Leibniz institutions. It aims to learn from previous crises and upheavals for the present and future. In particular, the dynamic changes after 1990 are associated with those of the present. The focus is on changes in the economy, the environment and political cultures.

PhD project
Part of the Leibniz-Verbundvorhaben „Digital Inequalities“
The project explores the introduction of computers and databases in government agencies in West Germany and Western Europe from the late 1960s to the early 21st century.

PhD project
Project leader: Priv.-Doz. Dr. Winfried Süß
Project editor: Vincent Kleinbub
The project aims to review the history of german youth hostels and their umbrella organization as well as to make visible the breaks and continuities in youth tourism in the 1930s to the 1950s.

Forschungsprojekt
Finanziert durch das Land Berlin (Senatsverwaltung für Finanzen), setzt dieses Projekt einen Beschluss des Berliner Abgeordnetenhauses um. Geleitet von Gabriele Metzler (ZZF/HU Berlin), Paul Nolte (FU Berlin) und Martin Sabrow (ZZF), entsteht in Kooperation mit Julia Hörath und Jan-Hendrik Friedrichs eine gemeinsame Monografie. Eine Tagung ist für Herbst 2026 geplant.
 

PhD project

The PhD project examines the convergence of East and West German radio journalism in the transformation phase of the 1990s based on the example of Deutschlandradio.

PhD project
Part of the Leibniz-Collaborative Excellence project "Crafting Entanglements. Afro-Asian Pasts of the Global Cold War" (CRAFTE)
Primary Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Frank Bösch, Secondary Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Isabella Löhr
The aim of the PhD project is to trace the lived realities of Afro-Asian students and trainees during the Cold War.

Research project
This research project explores how West Germans leveraged their own recent postwar experiences to build relationships with the decolonizing world from the 1950s to the 1970s.

Research project
This project responds to an urgent contemporary challenge: If we are inhabiting a rapidly warming planet, then we are also experiencing constant redefinitions of cooling

Although commonly understood as opponents of the rule of law, constitutionalism and constitutional rights, in recent years, the German populist and far-right has sought to claim the mantle of the popular struggle for democracy the Basic Law, both historically and in the present.

PhD project
This project aims at grasping the history of the BND after 1968, based on sources that have gone hitherto unnoticed or become only recently available. 

Associated Visual History Study
The project examines photographs and visual discourses on significant themes of economic, political and socio-cultural development: work, migration, social ideals and happiness.

PhD project
part of the ERC projekt “Perestroika from Below”
This project will examine Tengrism, a Nomadic Turko-Mongolic religion in Kazakhstan, during Perestroika. 

PhD project
This thesis posits the intersection of different study fields: Internet studies, Literary studies, Media studies, and cultural research. The main question of the research is, following Foucault, what is an author?

PhD project
Part of the Leibniz-Verbundvorhaben „Digital Inequalities“
The project examines the influence of digital change on gender-related inequalities in East and West Germany since the 1970s.

This project investigates the migration-related transformations of Western European democracies in historical perspective. It aims at critically interrogating present – in part racializing – narratives on European democracies and their ‘migrant other’.

PhD project
part of the joint project "Adjustment and Radicalisation. Dynamics in Popular Culture(s) in Pre-War Eastern Europe
Through analysis of comic routines and performances of the most influential Soviet and post-Soviet Russian comedians, the PhD project aims to trace the continuity and breaks in the evolution of Russian language verbal comedy over the past 80 years.

Research project
In cooperation with Prof. Dr. Christopher Ewing, Purdue University; USA
The project links sex tourism among gay men with sex tourism among heterosexual men in order. First, to examine the development of this form of tourism as well as the associated social and political discussions, cultural representations, and infrastructures from a distinctly historical perspective. And second, to overcome a latent division in the history of sexuality between queer and heteronormative sexuality by bringing these two groups together within a shared analytical framework.

Conference and publication project
Starting from the question of whether imposture and conmanship was connected to the political, social, and cultural transformations of the long twentieth century, the project therefore aims to trace the changes in the phenomenon.

PhD project
of the ERC project "Perestroika from Below"
The project examines the grassroots social composition of the perestoika-era crime boom in Ukraine, paying particular attention to its effects on society, identity and politics.

Forschungsprojekt
im Verbundprojekt "Das mediale Erbe der DDR"
Das Forschungsvorhaben untersucht die Genese und den Wandel der Zeitschrift sowie deren Funktion im Kontext der sich transformierenden ostdeutschen Gesellschaft. Dabei wird gefragt, in welcher Weise, mit welchen Inhalten und Formaten die Zeitschrift zu einem spezifisch ostdeutschen Sonderbewusstsein beigetragen hat.

Research project
within the BMBF joint project "The media heritage of the GDR"
Since the late 1980s, folk (Volksmusik( music has been a mass phenomenon in eastern Germany. In the existing scholarship on the “reunification society” (Wiedervereinigungsgesellschaft), cultural-historical perspectives have generally remained underrepresented. Research on East German folk music would help to fill this gap.
 

Research project
of the ERC project "Perestroika from Below"
The research project will take a look at the transformation of the Soviet museum system through the lens of different former Soviet republics: Estonia, Latvia, Uzbekistan and Russia.

Associated research project
The project on the history of aeronautical research during the Second World War, focusing on the Aerodynamische Versuchsanstalt (AVA) Göttingen, intends to open up new perspectives. 

The Netzwerk Zeitgeschichte connects museums, research and civil society. It wants to open spaces of non-profit, private, and federally funded mueseums and research facilities for project presentations and aims at connecting different players in the contemporary history space.

PhD project

The aim of the project is to investigate the extent to which the political, economic and social conditions of the Weimar Republic and the Nazi era influenced the representation of the self in photography.

Project
Project duration: December 2022 - November 2025
Project funding: HORIZON-WIDERA-2021-ACCESS-03-01 - Twinning
Project leader: Vilnius University in close collaboration with: Lund University, C²DH, ZZF Potsdam
Project leader at ZZF: Dr. Juliane Fürst
Project coordinator at the ZZF: Annette Steyn (Dora Komnenovic until 31.12.2024)
The aim of the joint project is to research the theory and practice of citizen participation in the co-production and communication of the past in the digital age. Juliane Fürst is the project leader at the ZZF.

With the online platform #covidmemory, the Luxembourg Centre for Contemporary and Digital History (C2DH) at the University of Luxembourg wants to offer all people living or working in Luxembourg the opportunity to share their experiences and preserve them for future generations.
Since 2022, the project has been continued outside the ZZF.

Laughter is the best medicine, so it goes. The science behind the saying, however, is not clear at all. The project aims to investigate how a scientifically disputed finding has become popular.
Since 2022, the project has been continued outside the ZZF.

PhD project
The project investigates the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine by examining individual violent actors during their deployment and the environments that produced them.

This study asks how the GDR urged its citizens, and women in particular, to present themselves as well-groomed subjects, and how they took up, reworked or subverted this expectation.

PhD project

The project examines the history of the semantics of ‘progress’ (‘Fortschritt’) in twentieth century german political language. The project is part of an investigation of political-social concepts of time and process and is funded within the framework of the collaborative project "The 20th Century in Basic Concepts. A Dictionary of Historical Semantics in Germany".

Research project
Concentrating on monetary and capital market policy in Great Britain and the Federal Republic of Germany from the 1970s to the 1990s, this research project examines the tensions between increasing market orientation and persisting regulatory claims.

Funded by the DFG 2022 to 2024 (own position)
This project asks how and why a project that not only required huge resources but implicated serious financial and technological risks as well was realized in times of grave economic crisis and socio-political challenges.   

PhD Project
part of the DFG Research Unit “Military Cultures of Violence"
The project is dedicated to the study of illegitimate military violence by Cossack units in the period between the Russian Revolution of 1905 and the end of the Second World War. 

PhD project
The project examines how the PDS transformed itself both at the federal and state level with regard to personnel, organization and program since the fall of 1989 and how it developed in the 1990s.

With zdbooks (https://zdbooks.de), the ZZF has put online a publishing platform (Scholar-Led Publishing) for digital publications under the Diamond Open Access (together with Frederike Heinitz and Judith Berthold).

PhD project
Project of the Postgraduate Research Group "Social Consequences of the Transformation of the World of Work"
This project examines the transformation of work and temporal regimes in temporary employment since the 1970s. 

PhD project
of the Postgraduate Research Group "Social Consequences of the Transformation of the World of Work"
Das Promotionsprojekt beschäftigt sich mit der Frage, welche sozialen Folgen Wiedervereinigung und Privatisierung der deutsch-deutschen Eisenbahnen, für die Arbeits- und Lebensverhältnisse von Eisenbahner*innen hatten. 

(Dominik Rigoll, research associate at the ZZF until July 31, 2026)
Habilitationsprojekt
Part of the project "The Radical Right in Germany, 1945-2000" 
Die Namen der kleinen nationalistischen Rechtsparteien, die sich nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg in Westdeutschland gründeten, sind heute fast vergessen, weil sie als mehr oder weniger einflusslos gelten. Diese Studie zeigt, dass einige dieser Rechtsparteien die westdeutsche Demokratie ganz im Gegenteil in vieler Hinsicht dauerhaft prägten.

PhD project

The project asks about the substitute function in the various types of avatars that appear as posthuman bodies.

PhD project
Project of the Postgraduate Research Group "Social Consequences of the Transformation of the World of Work"
This project follows the footsteps of the German shoe industry abroad, tells the story of the companies and their employees.

Research study
(Jutta Braun, together with Michael Wildt, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin)
The Federal Commissioner for Culture and the Media sent out a signal with a survey on coming to terms with National Socialism at around 100 BKM-funded cultural institutions in order to identify research deficits in the fields of visual arts, music, literature and film.

Research project
In Kooperation mit Prof. Dr. Benno Gammerl (EUI, Florenz), Prof. Dr. Nikolaos Papadogiannis (University of Stirling), Prof. Dr. Christiane Reinecke (Europauniversität Flensburg)
Das Projekt geht von der Annahme aus, dass die Mobilität historischer Individuen einen Einfluss auf ihre intimen Beziehungen und Praktiken hatte. Es fragt nach den komplexen Wechselwirkungen zwischen diesen beiden Bereichen. Teaser

PhD project (until 31.1.2023)
Part of the joint project "The Radical Right in Germany, 1945-2000"
The dissertation analyzes the lifestyle and realities of the radical right in the second half of the 20th century. It is a subproject of the VW Foundation-funded project "The Radical Right in Germany, 1945-2000".

Joint project
The project "Urban Authenticity" examines how in public debates, media presentations and during the planning process parts of the existing buildings in a city gain value because they get branded as authentic.

PhD project

The project puts the (soldier’s) photo album at the center of its investigation and examines the narrativity of this type of source.

Das Projekt historisiert den Streit um das „wahre“ Potsdam, die „Rückgewinnung der historischen Mitte“ und den Erhalt der „Ostmoderne“. Das Projekt ist Teil des Verbundprojektes: „Urban Authenticity: Creating, Contesting, and Visualising the Built Heritage in European Cities since the 1970s (UrbAuth)” Leibniz Research Alliance "Value of the Past".

Research project (Postdoc)
Supported by Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung, Feodor-Lynen-Rückkehrstipendium
Way before the era of online-dating- apps, marriage bureaux and dating institutes in the US and Europe began to use computers to conquer the rapidly growing markets of the ‘lonely hearts’. The project explores the long and chequered history of electronic matchmaking since the 1950s.

Research project
of the ERC project „Perestroika from Below“
The research project focuses on the wide range of grassroots peace and nonviolence initiatives that flourished at that time. 

PhD project
Part of the BMBF-funded research association “The GDR’s media heritage”
This project demonstrates how digital forms of GDR remembrance began to take shape already in the 1990s and 2000s – and thus before the rise of social media.

Book project
For nearly four decades, ADN-Zentralbild was the only photo agency in the GDR, and its visual policy was controlled by the SED. This project examines how this visual policy was implemented in practice, what image of socialist society it created, and how the agency established international networks.

Research project
The project analyzes how job requirements in three high-tech industries – automobiles, pharmaceutics, and information and communication technology – shifted in the Federal Republic of Germany since the 1970s. 

Violence after Stalinism is the theme of this research project. Using the dichotomy of violence and civility, it seeks to develop a better understanding of the transformation of Russian society from the late Brezhnev era into the present.

Cooperation project
of the ZZF and the University of Potsdam
under the direction of Prof. Dr. Frank Bösch and Prof. Dr. Dominik Geppert (University Potsdam)
The project will comprehensively investigate the transformations on the basis of three individual studies. The central question is the extent to which the founding history of Potsdam University differs from the transformation processes of other East German universities. There are two PhD projects at the ZZF.

PhD project
of the Interdisciplinary Research Network "Legacies of Communism?"
To this day, the “Colleges of Advanced Studies” are considered the playground of the young elite in Hungary. The project explores the role of the colleges in the transition from late socialism to democracy.

Research project
of the Interdisciplinary Research Network "Legacies of Communism? 
The project is based on the hypothesis of existing continuities from the Soviet to today’s Russian society. This seems to be especially true for the continuing existence of elites and networks. This assumption will be examined using the Russian museum system and museum professionals as a field of research. The project is part of the Interdisciplinary Research Network Legacies of Communism? 

Research project
part of the BMBF joint project "Das mediale Erbe der DDR"
Based on a program and user analysis for the period from 1989 to the mid-2000s, the project examines how the so-called "Third Programs" ORB and MDR as well as selected local television stations accompanied the profound social change. 

PhD project
The project examines the growing importance of economic regulation in West German environmental policy in the last third of the 20th century. In particular, it focuses on the proliferation of economic expertise in advisory boards such as the Council of Experts on Environmental Issues.
The project is part of the Joint Project "Expecting Limits and Limiting Expectations – Economic Expertise, Environmental Policy and Consumption, 1970-2000". 

Associated reseach project
Based on the history of the international, European and national legal regulation of nuclear power, the project deals with central questions of historical research: the role of international organisations and their experts; politics, law and regulation; environmental protection and energy use; and the handling of technologies and their risks.

The main goal of the research project is the connection of visual and linguistic modes of interpretation to conceptualize landscape as a multi-media aesthetic-political object.
 

Paul Merker, Politburo member of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) and the Socialist Unity Party (SED) was the highest-ranking East German Communist politician to fell victim of the Stalinist repression in the 1950s in the GDR. The planned book attempts to present the first full-scale political biography of Paul Merker.

PhD project
part of the BMBF joint project "Das mediale Erbe der DDR"
Private photo albums showing life in the GDR serve as a form of biographical memory, mediating between the private and public spheres. In this project, they are analysed for their political content, including work, travel, visits to the West, prestigious projects, propaganda and political events.

The project investigates the domestic security functions, methods and practices of the KGB in the last decades of its existence. It will explore the routine of the KGB’s work, as well as the mechanisms and instruments of social control that directly or indirectly affected “average” Soviet citizens in the course of everyday life.

PhD project

This project is particularly interested in the interrelations between the development of advertising and political and economic changes in the GDR. By investigating professional and governmental discourses, the study also aims to investigate how the focus of advertising has changed over the course of time.

Multimedia Website project
On the basis of so far partially unpublished documents, film and sound material, photographs and interviews with main actors as well as own research, the dramatic events during the construction and fall of the Wall up to the political unification of Germany are reconstructed and presented on a bilingual website (German/English) for the public.

This project addresses leadership systems underpinned with computers in the Bundeswehr and the National People’s Army (NVA) in the context of the formation and establishment of both armies within the alliance system of NATO and of the Warsaw Pact. 

Associated Edition project
The projected edition is dedicated to the citizens’ movement Alliance 90, which merged with the West German Greens in 1993 to form Alliance 90/The Greens. It documents the strategy debates between the citizens’ movements at the Round Table and in the People’s Chamber group, in the run-up to the 1990 state elections as to the 1990 general election to the German Bundestag.

The Academy of Arts (Akademie der Künste), Berlin, opened the exhibition ‘Fading Memories’ (Verblassende Erinnerung) in 2006, which displays works from one of the most renowned East German photographers, Sybille Bergmann. The title of the exhibition aims to present the radical changes of cities and landscapes since the time of the former GDR.

This biographical project focuses on two areas of research: the importance of biographies in East German power relations and the role Honecker played in the GDR’s long-term political stability and the government’s sudden downfall.

Edition project
Part of the edition project Hannah Arendt – Complete Works. Critical Edition.
The Critical Edition will present Hannah Arendt's texts for the first time in their entirety, annotated and in the variety of languages in which they were written.

PhD project
The German Democratic Republic's Ministry of State Security (MfS) operated in over 25 countries of what was then often described as the ‘Third World’. This study will present three case studies, hereby comparing Stasi activities in different countries and at different times. Zanzibar (1960s), Mozambique (1970s) and Nicaragua (1980s). The analysis will pinpoint which goals were pursued by the state security apparatus.

PhD project
The project looks at probation as a special form of social engineering. In doing so the rules of normative behaviour and their transformation since the 1950s are considered and the political strategies of governmental and non-governmental actors are examined, along with their policies of assistance and control, and it will be established to what extent providers relied on self-regulation. 

PhD project
After almost complete destruction during the Second World War, the city of Pforzheim became, as a result of the subsequent economic upsurge, a focal point for many newcomers. In a local study, it will be considered how the integration process was implemented by administration and society over the years, using the example of refugees from East Germany. 

The project aims, with the help of serial report sources, to reconstruct the informal formation of and shift in opinions and attitudes among the East German population.

Associated research project
This research project aims to present a biography of the Jewish expatriate Hilberg, who was born in 1926 in Vienna and fled to the United States in 1939. Furthermore, it will investigate the historical influence of his magnum opus.

The online repository visual-history.de, hosted by the ZZF, serves as a platform for historical research on visual sources and phenomena. It provides up-to-date insights into the growing community of visual historians and their activities, and supports the formation of professional networks.

The objective of this project is a compact portrayal of the social history of the SED dictatorship that combines the findings of the political history of the regime with analyses of the social structures and ranges of experience in East German society. 

Docupedia-Zeitgeschichte provides basic knowledge in the field of contemporary history for a wider public. The open-access online reference work enables readers to remain informed about research trends, subjects, controversies, theories and methods in contemporary history.

„Zeithistorische Forschungen/Studies in Contemporary History” (ZF/SCH) is a peer-review journal on questions of contemporary history with a German, European and global outlook.

Book project
The promotion of art played not only an artistic but also a socio-political role in the Federal Republic of Germany. This monograph examines the commitment of individual personalities in the transformation of the art and museum scene after 1945/49 and 1989/90. 

PhD project
Part of the Project of the Postgraduate Research Group "Social Consequences of the Transformation of the World of Work"
Why the DGB insisted on its demands and only hesitantly adapted to the changed circumstances and living conditions is determined in the project on the basis of four fields of investigation.

The handbook brings together approaches in the disciplines of international law history, the history of international relations, and the fields of East and Southeast European history. It demonstrates points of commonality found in certain current research approaches such as the New International History (a cultural history of all things political) and in Critical Legal Studies.

(until 2023)
The research aims at analyzing official and unofficial discourses of heritage in contemporary Russia. The Project analyzes how the concepts of cultural heritage are interpreted and used by official state institutions and public memorial and conservation projects.

Publication project
Project management: Inken Bartels, Isabella Löhr, Christiane Reinecke, Philipp Schäfer, Laura Stielike
The Inventar der Migrationsbegriffe, a constantly growing online platform that is regularly updated with new terms, presents key concepts from the current debates on migration and discusses how they have developed, how they are used in different social fields and how their meaning changes over time. 

PhD project

The project deals with the non-Zionist agricultural training centre Groß-Breesen in the former Lower Silesia.

Research project
The project deals with the internationalisation of the economy from the late nineteenth to the end of the twentieth century, analyzing it from the perspective of German companies.

The platform ‘Zeitgeschichte-online’ exists since January 2004. It aims to address historians, students of the humanities and similar courses and a wider public interested in contemporary history.

Post-Doc Project
The project examines crisis perceptions and crisis policies in two German and British trade unions in a long-term comparison. In particular, the post-war crisis 1919-1926 and the structural change at the end of the 1970s are examined. 

Research project
This project explores processes of political mobilisation in the conurbation of the German capital in Nazi Germany. This economic region with 5.3 million inhabitants in 1939 covered an area from Potsdam in the west to Oranienburg in the north and comprised several outstanding military installations. The capital Berlin and the Prussian province of Brandenburg had close administrative ties.

Book project
The target of this project is a monograph entitled ‘The Fordist Century’. The study will focus on Germany, including perspectives on global and international developments (besides the USA, particularly Japan, the USSR, Italy and Sweden [post-Fordist Volvo system]).

The project analyses the history of mass media relations and interdependencies in the Federal Republic of Germany and the GDR until the end of the Cold War. Which reflexes, competitions and cooperations characterised their relationship, and how did it evolve? Was it primarily a propaganda war or did the mass media – especially public broadcasting – create a “bridge over troubled water” in the conflict between the two Germanys? How did the collapse of Communism affect this relationship?

Book project
The aim of the book is an integrated history of knowledge about social inequality, social conflicts and politics regulating social inequality, which can be helpful for historicising and contextualising current debates about wealth, poverty and social inequality. 

SAW Project
Subproject Lead: Frank Bösch
Leibniz Collaborative Excellence Project, funded by the Leibniz Association,
Critically following actors’ trajectories and practices, the project goes beyond the analyses of state programmatics, institutions and discourses, which have dominated Cold War research. At its centre-stage is the question: How were Afro-Asian actors embedded in, and in turn how did they shape, the global Cold War? ​ 

The metropolitan Cities of Moscow and Chicago stood in many ways for their nations’ path to modernity. They were places of hope and despair, of reform and revolution, of violence and civility. The study will explore how urban modernity was dealt with in two different cultural contexts that were confronted with often similar problems.