Research Projects

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“

The project description will follow shortly.

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.

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“
The project description will follow shortly.

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. 

PhD project
This project is part of the Competence Network Interdisciplinary Ukraine Studies (KIU). 
Supervisor of this project: Prof. Dr. Jan C. Behrends
The project examines the entangled history of Dutch and German colonial ambitions in Ukraine over the 20th Century from a comparative perspective.

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 poject
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
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

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

PhD project
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.

Projekt 
The project shall provide a deep comparative look at how Americans and Germans have dealt with their difficult pasts, their memory cultures, policies, and current challenges like racism and growing antisemitism.  About 50 scholars and teachers, museum curators and other public historians, people working in foundations and NGOs from the United States and Germany go on two week-long “tours” in 2025.

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" supported by the Volkswagen Foundation
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.

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.

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.

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.

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. 

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

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.

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.

The project traces FemTech back to feminist self-help initiatives, community clinics and health organizations in which female* health continues to be a political, noncommercial, community-driven concern.

PhD Project
The dissertation examines how the socio-political context of late-Soviet Leningrad prepared the ground for the monument protection activism revived by Perestroika.

Research project
within the Leibniz-Verbundvorhaben „Digital Inequalities“ 

The research 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.

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.

An interview and virtual exhibition project
The project commemorates the non-violent withdrawal of the Soviet armed forces from East Germany in 1994 — a pivotal moment that symbolised the conclusion of the Cold War and stands as a unique occurrence in the annals of armed conflicts. The focus is on the social reappraisal and reuse of the military areas left behind. The project uses interviews with contemporary witnesses and experts, as well as a participatory online exhibition, to explore the political, ecological, and cultural memory dimensions of this change.

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. 

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.

Kooperationsprojekt
Rund 30 Geschichtsstudentinnen und -studenten aus Deutschland und Dänemark entwickeln in Workshops (online und vor Ort) zwischen November 2024 und Februar 2025 didaktische Konzepte und erarbeiten Material für die Kriegsgräberstätte Oksbøl (Dänemark). 

The project aims to enrich the development of a new reflexive Museum Studies and museum practice .

Das Projekts untersucht den Wandel geschichtsbezogener Wertebegriffe und Wertedebatten, u.a. anhand des Begriffs in der Historiographie und Theorie der Geschichte, im Diskurs über das UNESCO-Welterbe, in konservativen und neu-rechten Diskursen, in gesellschaftlichen Krisenzeiten, sowie in politischen Debatten.

PhD project

Partproject 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 associated PhD project.

PhD project

The project deals with the fundamental changes in industrial labour and in the wake of the rise of digital technologies. It analyses the influence of digital change for corporate strategies and work processes in the chemical and pharmaceutical industry since the 1970s.

Fotografien der langen Wende focusses on images of the East German transformation process. The research and exhibition project examines the upheaval of 1989/90 in the context of the late GDR and the early 1990s.

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.

Digital exhibition project
with students of the Master's program Public History (FU Berlin/ZZF Potsdam)

The FHXB Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg Museum in Berlin has an extensive collection of historical postcards from and about the Berlin district of Kreuzberg before 1945. In a digiS-funded project entitled ‘The Peter Plewka Collection - Kreuzberg before 1945 in historical postcards’ public history students are developing an online presentation of selected postcards. The students will present the maps they have selected and tell the story or stories associated with them.

Research project
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 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.

The project examines the entanglements of prostitution and transnational mobility on the basis of state and international attempts of regulation, media imaginaries and the multi-layered experiences of the women involved.

PhD project

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.

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.

The ZZF's Pop History research group and the Archive of Youth Cultures in Berlin are researching youth cultures in the GDR.

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

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. 

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.

The associated research 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

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

PhD project

Subproject of the joint project "Adjustment and Radicalisation. Dynamics in Popular Culture(s) in Pre-War Eastern Europe". Headed by the ZfL and in cooperation with the GWZO, the ZFF, and the Professorship for Slavic Literature and Cultural Studies (with a focus on Polish Studies) at the University of Potsdam.

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.

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’.

The Ukrainian SSR is considered as one of the main centres of fashion development in the Soviet Union. The project is devoted to a thorough exploration of the history of Ukrainian Soviet fashion in the context of ideology and everyday life during the Cold War.

Exhibition project/Multimedia traveling exhibition
(Bad Freienwalde, Berlin, Weimar, Hamburg)
The exhibition explores the uprisings, assassinations and attempted coups in the early years of the Weimar Republic. Eight perspectives illustrate how extremists and separatists brought Germany to the brink of civil war.

Forschungsprojekt
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.

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.

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. 

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
Seit den späten 1980er Jahren ist Volksmusik im Osten Deutschland ein Massenphänomen. Im Projekt wird erstmals untersucht, inwiefern in den verschiedenen Formaten inhaltliche Traditionen aus der DDR übernommen und transformiert wurden und welche Gründe der Beliebtheit des Massenphänomens zugrunde liegen. 
 

Book project
The project analyzes the reform of the abortion law (§218) during the German unification period as result of a decade-long public debate on reforming the outdated abortion law in West Germany. 

Juliane Scholz can be contacted via the University of Lübeck, e-mail: Juliane.Scholz@uni-luebeck.de

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The project examines how a GDR-specific beauty culture developed and how distinction was possible in a society whose goal was to overcome class differences.

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.

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.

PhD Project
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. 

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

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 new publication platform on which eBooks appear in open access gold (together with Frederike Heinitz and Caroline Boisten).

PhD project

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. 

PhD project

Project of the Postgraduate Research Group "Social Consequences of the Transformation of the World of Work"
Das Dissertationsprojekt untersucht die sozialen Folgen der arbeitsweltlichen Veränderungen im ostdeutschen Einzelhandel im ersten Jahrzehnt nach der deutschen Einheit.

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. 

Postdoc-Project
Part of the project "The Radical Right in Germany, 1945-2000" 
The small right-wing parties that formed in the western occupation zones after 1945 and shortly after the founding of the Federal Republic are generally regarded as politically failed and historically rather irrelevant. This study shows that, despite their relative weakness, these parties, whose acronyms are largely forgotten today, shaped the democratic reconstruction in the Länder from 1946 onwards and later also the emerging democracy in Bonn in many respects. 

PhD project

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

Associated Postdoc project (until 31.5.2025)
Part of the project "The Radical Right in Germany, 1945-2000"
The project investigates how radical right-wing ideologies have changed since 1945 in the Federal Republic and in France. 

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.

PhD project (until 31.1.2023)
Part of the 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".

PhD project

This project is situated in between the history of science, technology and media. The focus of the research will be the relationship between thinking and (manual) labour and how it was measured, stabilised, scrutinised or formed in the first place by psychological performance tests in Germany (and partly Austria and Switzerland) during the 20th century.

PhD project

Part of the project "The Radical Right in Germany, 1945-2000" 
Based on internal files, this dissertation project is the first to examine previously unknown practices of the radical right both in the Bundeswehr and comparatively in the NVA in a cross-cutting and actor-oriented manner. It is part of the project “The Radical Right in Germany, 1945-2000" supported by the Volkswagen Foundation.

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.

Forschungsprojekt
Das Projekt betreut: Prof. Dr. Thomas Schaarschmidt
Das Forschungsprojekt soll die Lücke schließen, die sich aus der Fixierung der Forschung auf die industriellen Großbetriebe der DDR und ihre Privatisierung bzw. Abwicklung durch die Treuhand in den 90er Jahren ergeben hat.

PhD project

Part of the project "The Radical Right in Germany, 1945-2000"
How the „Young National Democrats“ attained and exercised this key position in the right-wing milieu has not yet been researched historically. The project pursues this question by analyzing their structures, alliances, and activities from the perspective of social history. 

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.

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".

of the ERC project „Perestroika from Below“
The project will examine a history of the independent peace movement in the USSR in the late 1970s – 1980s and the global backgrounds of its activity. 

Collaborative research project / Verbundprojekt
Leibniz-Wettbewerbsverfahren, 2020-2023, research network of: ZMO Berlin, IEG Mainz, ZZF Potsdam, IFO Amman, Manouba University
Project leader at ZZF: Frank Bösch
Completed part project "Frauen in Bewegung. Migrantische Aushandlungsprozesse zwischen West-Berlin und ddr Türkei (1961-1990)"
Completed PhD project: Elisabeth Kimmerle
(Elisabeth Kimmerle received her doctorate from the University of Potsdam on December 18, 2024 with the top grade “summa cum laude”.)
The project explores democracy and debates about democracy in the Arab and Muslim worlds from a historical perspective. 

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.

PhD project

The project examines how individual foreign trade transactions of the GDR took place and what role the state-monopolized foreign trade enterprises played in the preparation and execution of those transactions.

Anhand von Fotografien und schriftlichen Quellen zur staatlichen Bildagentur Zentralbild der DDR untersucht das Projekt, unter welchen Bedingungen die DDR staatliche Bildpolitik betrieb und wie sich unter diesen Bedinungen visueller Konformismus, aber auch fotografischer Eigensinn entfalteten.

PhD project

The PhD project asks: What transnational networks did civil society groups from both Northern Ireland and the FRG establish and how did these change during the Northern Ireland conflict? And what interpretations of violence or nonviolence shaped their engagement?

PhD project

Part of the cooperation project of the ZZF and the University of Potsdam "The Transformation of the East German Universities in the 1980s / 90s"
Project leader at ZZF: Prof. Dr. Frank Bösch 
The project examines the transformation of the humanities after the peaceful revolution of 1989/90 in East Germany, focusing on Potsdam as a university city.

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.

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. 

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.

Joint project "Drifting Apart"
Subproject at the ZZF Potsdam under the direction of Frank Bösch.

The subproject examines how international engagement with Iran has changed since the 1979 revolution. It analyzes the negotiation and enforcement of sanctions as well as the emergence of new forms of cooperation.

PhD project

of the Interdisciplinary Research Network "Legacies of Communism?"
This project focuses on the legacies of the communist system in the field of football and gives access to the bottom-up perspective of the political-economic transformation in post-communist Ukraine. 

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.
 

PhD project

Part of the project “Expecting Limits and Limiting Expectations – Economic Expertise, Environmental Policy and Consumption, 1970-2000”. The project examines the regulation of the energy consumption of private households from the 1970s to 1990s. 

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? 

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. This Project is a part of the BMBF joint project "Das mediale Erbe der DDR".

PhD project

Part of the Project "Expecting Limits and Limiting Expectations – Economic Expertise, Environmental Policy and Consumption, 1970-2000". 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.

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.

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.

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.
 

PhD project

Private photo albums form an important part of the biographical memory of people from the former GDR. As ego documents and a kind of "retreat into the private sphere", they are contextualized with contemporary events and analyzed for their political content. The associated PhD project is part of the BMBF joint project "Das mediale Erbe der DDR".

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. 

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.

(until 2023)
The aim of the project is to investigate the experiences of the young men serving in the Soviet armed forces in the late socialist period. A special emphasis is placed on the barrack violence that expanded increasingly throughout the 1970s and 1980s.

PhD project

The project analyses the socio-economic situation of East German employee households in the period between 1980 and 2000 - i.e. beyond the epochal caesura of 1989/90.

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.

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. 

PhD project

With a diachronic study, the pictorial representation of "guest workers" and "(late) resettlers" in the German print media between 1955 and 1998 is to be analyzed in this project. 

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.

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.

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. 

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.

Publication project

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. 

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?

PhD project

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 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.

In the project (until 04/2024), based on artefacts from the Documentation Centre for Everyday Culture in the DDR, Eisenhüttenstadt, these family worlds of objects were reconstructed and analysed. The questions are posed as to how things were involved in different ‘Lebensstile’ (lifestyles) and ‘Lebensweisen’ (ways of life) and how their validity can be used for socio-historical issues.

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.