GHIL Blog
There is a lot going on at the German Historical Institute, both within and without the walls of our beautiful building on London’s Bloomsbury Square. With this blog, we want to share with you insights into ongoing research projects, reflections on current debates in our fields, notes from scholarship holders, and reports on events and publications. If you would like to be notified about future posts, you can sign up for our RSS feed. You can browse all of our posts, past and present, in the dropdown menus or go straight to the blog.

26 June 2025
Blogpost
Lisa Hellriegel
‘Woman’s Work’? What Debates about Policewomen in the Interwar Period Tell us about Contemporary Understandings of Sexual Violence
Category: Research, Scholarships
13 June 2025
Blogpost
Talha Murat
An Intellectual Sufi between Empires: Muhammad Tawfīq al-Bakrī (1870–1932)
Category: Research, Scholarships
6 June 2025
Blogpost
Bodo Mrozek
From London Fog to Frankfurt Smog: Sensing Anthropogenic Weather Conditions from a Transurban Perspective in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
Part 3—Deindustrialization as Pollution Export: From Pittsburgh and Chicago to Baghdad and Delhi
Category: Research, Scholarships
23 May 2025
Blogpost
Lucas Haasis
The Concordia: A Global Microhistory of a Bremen Ship
Category: Research, Scholarships
16 May 2025
Blogpost
Bodo Mrozek
From London Fog to Frankfurt Smog: Sensing Anthropogenic Weather Conditions from a Transurban Perspective in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
Part 2: Sniffer Squads on the Odour Trail: Smog in Frankfurt
Category: Research, Scholarships
9 May 2025
Blogpost
Thiago P. Barbosa
Germany–India Entanglements in the Scientific Racialization of Caste
Category: Research, Publications, Prizes
29 April 2025
Blogpost
Bodo Mrozek
From London Fog to Frankfurt Smog: Sensing Anthropogenic Weather Conditions from a Transurban Perspective in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
Part 1: Shades of Yellow, Black, and Grey: The London ‘Pea Souper’, The ‘Manchester Entire’, and Sooty Hamburg around 1900
Category: Research, Scholarships
16 April 2025
Blogpost
Constanze Weiske
From Germany to the Caribbean: The Baring Bank of London's Involvement in the Slave Plantation Economy
Category: Research, Scholarships
1 April 2025
Blogpost
Pappal Suneja
The Modern Architecture Discourse of Design (1957-1988) through a Postcolonial Lens
Category: Research, Scholarships
17 March 2025
Blogpost
Karolin Wetjen
Collecting Weather Data: The Use of Scientific Instruments in Nineteenth-Century Climate Research
Category: Research, Scholarships
3 March 2025
Blogpost
Felix Wessel
The End of the Guilds in Syria
Category: Research, Scholarships
19 February 2025
Blogpost
Frauke Ahrens
Facets of Transnationalism in the Late Nineteenth Century: New Perspectives on the History of Folklore Studies
Category: Research, Scholarships
3 February 2025
Blogpost
Sophie Schmittzehe
Sketching Conceptual History's ‘Janus Face’: Reinhart Koselleck and Karl Löwith
Category: Research
16 January 2025
Blogpost
Maya Kreiner
‘More a denial than a safeguard of rights’: Law, Politics and Constitutional Discussions in Mandatory Palestine
Category: Research, Scholarships
3 January 2025
Blogpost
Katharina Troll
European Integration Re-Woven: British and West German Textile Employers' Associations and European Integration, 1958-1980
Category: Research, Scholarships
Previous blogposts
2024
12 December 2024
Blogpost
Leonie Wolters
Human Interest in the Global South: The Gemini News Service (1967-2002)
Category: GHIL Fellows, Research
28 November 2024
Blogpost
William King
(De)Constructing Europe? Some Findings . . .
Category: GHIL Fellows, Research
14 November 2024
Blogpost
Damiana Salm
‘Fuel Poverty’ and the Crisis of Welfare in Britain, 1970s–1980s
Category: Research, Scholarships
31 October 2024
Blogpost
Olivia Mayer
‘Alionor Cobhame conspyryd the kynges deth’: The Magic Trial of Eleanor Cobham, 1441
Category: Research, Scholarships
10 October 2024
Blogpost
Catharina Hänsel
‘The problem is organising time, not work.’ : Exploring Working Time Regulations and the Determination of ‘Scientific Wages’ in Ahmedabad through the Archives of the Wellcome Collection, London
Category: Research, Scholarships
2 September 2024
Blogpost
Flemming Falz
‘Consider Margaret Thatcher’s premiership as ground zero for the mess we are in now.’ The British Housing Crisis in Non-Fiction
Category: Research, Scholarships
15 July 2024
Blogpost
Josefine Langer Shohat
Too German for Holocaust Research? Alfred Wiener and Louis de Jong on the Institut für Zeitgeschichte, 1952
Category: Research, Scholarships
1 July 2024
Blogpost
Kay Schmücking
Britain’s View of the German Cult of the Dead: A Media History Perspective
Category: Research, Scholarships
17 June 2024
Blogpost
Felicitas Remer
‘Political Balance’ or ‘Natural Growth’? The British Mandate, Meir Dizengoff, and the Struggle over Tel Aviv Port in the 1920s and 1930s
Category: Research, Scholarships
3 June 2024
Blogpost
Stephan Bruhn
Social Inequality: Early Medieval Perspectives on a Modern-Day Challenge
Category: GHIL Fellows, Research
15 May 2024
Blogpost
Ana Carolina Schveitzer
Visualizing Labour in German East Africa: Photographic Images and their Circulation
Category: Research, Scholarships
1 May 2024
Blogpost
Mirjam Brusius
Museums Under Construction: On Loss, Disorder, Destruction, and Objects in Storerooms
Category: GHIL Fellows, Research
15 April 2024
Blogpost
Elisa Heuser
The Welsh Fasting Girl: A Morbid Spectacle
Category: Research, Scholarships
28 March 2024
Blogpost
Sarah Maria Noske
‘No Shows’ and Other Forms of Refusal: Reading Missionary Letters about the Loyalty Islands
Category: Research, Scholarships
29 February 2024
Blogpost
Janis Meder
Competition between Profit and Principles: The ‘Natural’ Market Niche in 1980s Britain
Category: Research, Scholarships
2023
21 December 2023
Blogpost
James Krull
Trial and Error: The Federal Republic of Germany’s Failed First National Day of Remembrance and Where to Go from There
Category: Publications
23 November 2023
Blogpost
Christopher Dillon & Kim Wünschmann
The German Revolution of 1918–19: Expectations, Experiences, Responses
Category: Publications
9 November 2023
Blogpost
Lea Levenhagen
A Short Walk through London’s History during the Second World War: Financial Experts in Exile
Category: Research, Scholarships
10 October 2023
Blogpost
Maximilian Rose
Philip Quaque in Cape Coast 1766–1816
Category: Research, Scholarships
28 September 2023
Blogpost
Kim Embrey
Sing a Line with Coca Wine: The European Rediscovery of Coca
Category: Research, Scholarships
12 September 2023
Blogpost
Philipp Molderings
The Postcolonial Nation in the Museum: World Appropriation and National Identity at the Humboldt Forum and British Museum
Category: Research, Scholarships
3 August 2023
Blogpost
Annika Stendebach
All Along the Peace Walls – Revisiting 1960s and 1970s Belfast
Category: Research, Scholarships
11 July 2023
Blogpost
Frieda Ottmann
A View of Europe through the Prism of the Rhine
Category: Research, Scholarships
29 June 2023
Blogpost
Almuth Ebke
Essays and Reviews: The ‘Greatest Religious Crisis of the Victorian Age’?
Category: Research, Scholarships
13 June 2023
Blogpost
Beatrice Blümer
Studia humanitatis in Text and Image: The Liber insularum Archipelagi by Cristoforo Buondelmonti
Category: Research, Scholarships
16 May 2023
Blogpost
Daniela Roberts
Creating Space and Collection Display in British Gothic Revival Houses (1740–1860)
Category: Research, Scholarships
13 April 2023
Blogpost
Dorothea McEwan
Eduard Zander in Ethiopia, 1847–68
Category: Publications
28 March 2023
Blogpost
Dorothea McEwan
Studies on Aby Warburg, Fritz Saxl, and Gertrud Bing
Category: Publications
9 March 2023
Blogpost
Ole Merkel
Socialism and Slavery within the British and German Socialist Labour Movements, 1830–1890
Category: Research, Scholarships
16 February 2023
Blogpost
Jonas Bechtold
The Emperor’s Diet or the Empire’s Reichstag? Sixteenth-Century English Wordplay on the ‘Diet’ and its Heuristic Use
Category: Research, Scholarships
26 January 2023
Blogpost
Louisa-Dorothea Gehrke
Botany in Time and Space: The Chelsea Physic Garden
Category: Research, Scholarships
11 January 2023
Blogpost
Martin Kristoffer Hamre
Promoting German Nazism in the Heart of the British Empire: The London Congress of the ‘Nationalist International’ in July 1935
Category: Research, Scholarships
2022
15 December 2022
Blogpost
Stephan Bruhn & Marcus Meer
Conference Report: The Politics of Iconoclasm in the Middle Ages, 1–2 September 2022
Category: Events
22 November 2022
Blogpost
Haureh Hussein
Māori Iwi, Quaker Whalers, and Missionaries at the Bay of Islands in Aotearoa/New Zealand (1790–1840)
Category: Research, Scholarships
3 November 2022
Blogpost
Katharina Breidenbach
Pastors, Commissaries, Diplomats: Agency and Migration Networks in the Early Modern Period
Category: Research, Scholarships
28 September 2022
Blogpost
Levke Harders and Falko Schnicke
Borders and Belonging: Subjects of Current and Historical Significance
Category: Publications
8 September 2022
Blogpost
Christina Bröker
Anger, Astonishment, and other Reactions: A Medieval King’s Emotional Behaviour
Category: Research, Scholarships
28 July 2022
Blogpost
Marcus Meer
Conference Report: Workshop on Medieval Germany, 6 May 2022
Category: Events
14 July 2022
Blogpost
Lukas Herde
‘Enjoy your bodies!’: Writing the History of Sexuality in Later Life through 1980s British Television
Category: Research, Scholarships
23 June 2022
Blogpost
Christian Schuster
British Migrants in the Kingdom of Saxony and Saxons in London, c.1850–1914
Category: Research, Scholarships
9 June 2022
Blogpost
Oscar Broughton
Translating Guild Socialism: The Case of Eva Schumann (1889–1967)
Category: Research, Scholarships
31 May 2022
Blogpost
Maximilian Priebe
Conceptual History as a Philosophical Methodology: The Case of Hans Blumenberg’s Metaphorology
Category: Research
26 May 2022
Blogpost
Maximilian Priebe
What Is, and To What End Do We Study, Intellectual History?: A Comparison of Two Approaches: The ‘Cambridge School’ and ‘Conceptual History’
Category: Research
5 May 2022
Blogpost
Marie Cabadi
Women’s Centres and their Newsletters: Feminist Spaces and Print Cultures in Belgium, France, and the United Kingdom
Category: ISWG, Research
21 April 2022
Blogpost
Chantal Bsdurrek
A Brotherhood of Soldiers? Concepts of Comradeship 1914–1938
Category: Research, Scholarships
5 April 2022
Blogpost
Martin Christ
Recording the Dead in Early Modern London and Munich
Category: Research, Scholarships
22 March 2022
Blogpost
Michael Schaich
New Publication on Manuscript Newsletters around 1700
Category: Publications
24 February 2022
Blogpost
Kassandra Hammel
Conference Report: The History of Medialization and Empowerment: The Intersection of Women’s Rights Activism and the Media, 20–21 January 2022
Category: Events, ISWG, Research
17 February 2022
Blogpost
Cristina Sasse
Directories and the Legibility of Urban Spaces, 1760–1830
Category: Publications
1 February 2022
Blogpost
Anita Klingler
Talking about Political Violence in Interwar Britain and Germany
Category: Prizes, Research
20 January 2022
Blogpost
Anne M. Valk
Imagining a Transnational and Transhistorical Movement Against Violence
Category: ISWG, Research
11 January 2022
Blogpost
Vicente Pons Martí
Perspectives on Political Parties in Nineteenth-Century Britain
Category: Research, Scholarships
2021
9 December 2021
Blogpost
Joseph Cronin
The Future of Holocaust Studies in Light of the ‘Catechism Debate’: Reflections from an Observer
Category: Dialogue
18 November 2021
Blogpost
Jane Freeland
The Politics of Photography: An Interview with Mary-Ann Kennedy
Category: Events, Research, ISWG
11 November 2021
Blogpost
Marcus Meer
Conference Report: The Twelfth Medieval History Seminar, 30 September–2 October 2021
Category: Events
28 October 2021
Blogpost
Alexandria Ruble
Sustaining ‘Information for Women’: The Informationsdienst für Frauenfragen, the American Military Occupation, and Women’s Politics in West Germany, 1951–1990
Category: Research, ISWG
28 September 2021
Blogpost
Maissan Hassan
‘Doing Well, Don’t Worry’: Exhibiting Archives as a Feminist Practice
Category: ISWG, Research
15 September 2021
Blogpost
Sabrina Mittermeier
#IchBinHanna: What next?
Category: Dialogue, Race, History, Academia
31 August 2021
Blogpost
Jane Freeland
Understanding Social Change through the Digital Humanities
Category: Research, ISWG
28 July 2021
Blogpost
Charlotta Salmi
Framing Women’s Rights in Nepali Street Art
Category: ISWG, Research
13 July 2021
Blogpost
Julian Katz
Intervention on Behalf of Foreign Subjects during the Anglo-Spanish War, 1585–1604
Category: Publications, Research
1 July 2021
Blogpost
Rike Szill
Prophecies and (Hi)Stories: Telling the Conquest of Constantinople in 1453
Category: Research, Scholarships
17 June 2021
Blogpost
Johanna Gehmacher
The Production of Historical Feminisms, Part Two: Transnational Strategies and the Feminist ‘We’
Category: ISWG, Research
8 June 2021
Blogpost
Dorothea McEwan
Ethiopia Illustrated: Manuscripts and Painting in Ethiopia – Examples from the Seventeenth to the Nineteenth Century
Category: Publications, Research
27 May 2021
Blogpost
Johanna Gehmacher
The Production of Historical Feminisms, Part One: Historical Awareness and Political Activism
Category: ISWG, Research
27 April 2021
Blogpost
Kirsten Kamphuis
Not your Average National Hero: Scattered Archives and the Women of the Indonesian Anticolonial Movement
Category: ISWG, Research
13 April 2021
Blogpost
Manuel Kohlert
Vicarious Observation: Conveying Pleasure and Sensory Experience in Eighteenth-Century British Periodicals
Category: Research, Scholarships
30 March 2021
Blogpost
Jennifer L. Rodgers
The Spaces Between: Interstitial Archives and Childbirth Activism in 1970s West Germany and the United States
Category: ISWG, Research
16 March 2021
Blogpost
Birte Meinschien
Historiography in Emigration: German Historians in Great Britain after 1933
Category: Publications
4 March 2021
Blogpost
Matthias Büttner
Days of Betrayal: Violations of Trust and Loyalty in Late Medieval England
Category: Research, Scholarships
23 February 2021
Blogpost
D-M Withers
Knowledge Trouble: Practice, Theory and Anxiety in late 1970s Feminist Movements
Category: ISWG, Research
10 February 2021
Blogpost
Morgan Golf-French
Beyond Heroes and Villains: Reassessing Racism in the German Enlightenment
Category: Race, History, and Academia, Research
28 January 2021
Blogpost
Jane Freeland et al.
Conference Report: ‘Archiving, Recording and Representing Feminism: The Global History of Women’s Emancipation in the Twentieth Century’
Category: Events, ISWG
20 January 2021
Blogpost
Marcus Meer
Broken Symbols: Display and Destruction during the Attack on the Capitol
Category: Research
14 January 2021
Blogpost
Pierre Sfendules
An Ancient Church Father and his Victorian Audience: Christian von Bunsen’s...
Category: Research
6 January 2021
Blogpost
Nuriani Hamdan et al.
"Who remains?" (Part 1): Before we even start our research…
Category: Race, History, and Academia
2020
21 December 2020
Blogpost
Jane Freeland
The Allure of the Archive: On Frustration and Comfort in the Historian’s Craft
Category: Events, ISWG
17 December 2020
Blogpost
Debarati Bagchi
National Education Policy 2020: A Discussion on Educational Policy Reform in India, 14 October 2020
Category: Events, India Branch Office
4 December 2020
Blogpost
Stephan Bruhn
Medieval Notions of Consent and Contemporary Social Cohesion: Impressions from Workshop ‘Law and Consent in Medieval Britain’, 30 October 2020
Category: Events, Research
26 November 2020
Blogpost
Jane Freeland
The Media, Feminism and Women’s Emancipation: The International Standing Working Group on Medialization and Empowerment
Category: ISWG, Research
19 November 2020
Blogpost
Yamini Agarwal
‘Is this home? Not so much!’ – Gender, Ethnicity and Belongingness to the City
Category: India Branch Office, Research
5 November 2020
Blogpost
Marcus Meer
The GHIL’s New Website and the History of the Web
Category: Announcements
16 October 2020
Blogpost
Christina Morina and Norbert Frei
Racism and Historiography
Category: Dialogue, Race, History, and Academia
6 October 2020
Blogpost
Dipanwita Donde
The Greedy Dog – Gestures, Postures and Emotions Portraying Degrees of Vice and Virtue in the Sixteenth-Century Iyār-i Dānish
Category: Research
29 September 2020
Blogpost
Mirjam Brusius
History is Located Inside, not Outside Racial Biases – Can Historians in Germany Break the Silence after Black Lives Matter? (Part 2)
Category: Dialogue, Race, History, and Academia
24 September 2020
Blogpost
Mirjam Brusius
History is Located Inside, not Outside Racial Biases – Can Historians in Germany Break the Silence after Black Lives Matter? (Part 1)
Category: Dialogue, Race, History, and Academia
22 September 2020
Blogpost
Michael Schaich
Manuscript News Sheets: A Neglected Medium of Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Europe
Category: Research
15 September 2020
Blogpost
Olga Witmer
Germans, the Dutch East India Company, and Early Colonial South Africa
Category: Research, Scholarships
10 July 2020
Blogpost
Christina von Hodenberg
Welcome to the blog of the German Historical Institute London!
Category: Announcements