German Historical Institute London
Prizes
Prize of the German Historical Institute London
Awarded annually for an outstanding Ph.D. thesis on British, German, or British-Colonial history, British-German relations, or British-German comparative history.
The Prize is 1,000 Euros, presented at the GHIL’s Annual Lecture in November 2026.
To be eligible, applicants must have successfully completed doctoral exams and vivas between 1 August 2025 and 31 July 2026.
Deadline for applications: 31 July 2026
GHIL Building
Renovation Works and Closure
The GHIL building, including the library, will be closed for renovation works until Summer 2026.
Among other works, our reception space and the seminar and common rooms will receive a face-lift, and a previously hidden Octagon room on a the ground floor will become a new meeting space.
Please bear with us during this unavoidable period of closure. We look forward to welcoming you to the new and improved GHIL in a few months' time!
28–29 May 2026
Workshop
Politics of Land
The Politicization of Rurality in Europe since the late 20th Century
HIS, Hamburg
28 May 2026 (5.30pm)
Special Lecture
On Magicking a Mountain: World-Making in Literary Translation
Susan Bernofsky (Columbia University)
GHIL/Zoom
26 May 2026
Blogpost
Silas Edwards
Capturing Images: Butterfly Collecting and the Colour Printing Revolution
Category: Research, Scholarships
18 May 2026
Blogpost
Kevin Lenk
The Pirate, the Sovereign, and the Subject: Old Enemies and New Problems in the Face of Maritime Modernity (1890–1939)
Category: Research, Scholarships
GHIL Lecture
Benno Gammerl
Queering German History: Still a Vital and Viable Endeavour?
GHIL Lecture
6 May 2026
(0:46 h)
GHIL Lecture
Benno Gammerl
Queering German History: Still a Vital and Viable Endeavour?
What difference can queer perspectives make in our understanding of the German past and in present-day conversations around sexual and gender diversity? Having taught and published on LGBT history for several years in Berlin, London, and other places, Benno Gammerl takes this opportunity to reflect on the impact of such work. Looking at experiences and struggles of same-sex loving and gender-nonconforming people in Germany since around 1900, the talk discusses whether we should continue doing queer history in spite of the criticism that it essentializes sexual identity categories, and against powerful pushback from right-wing and other parts of the political spectrum in the East and West.
Benno Gammerl is Professor of History of Gender and Sexuality at the European University Institute in Florence. His work addresses oral, emotional, queer-feminist, and intersectional histories. He is currently researching how bi-cultural couples in Germany have intimately navigated diversity since the 1960s. In 2023 he published Queer. Eine deutsche Geschichte vom Kaiserreich bis heute.
Gudrun Krämer
Local modernity: agency, entanglement, and the making of the modern Middle East
Lokale Moderne: Agency, Austausch und die Enstehung des modernen Mittleren Ostens
Marianne Taatz-Jacobi
Textrecycling: Nachdrucke und Debattentransfer in England (1640–1660)