PD Dr. Robert Kramm

• Global history and Asia-Pacific history
• Imperial and (post-)colonial history
• History of everyday life and history from below
• Radical history and history of anarchism
• History of sexuality and of the body
• History of military occupations and history of Violence
• Social and cultural theory

In the Shadow of Lighthouses is a global history of everyday life and technology that uses individual lighthouses to tell hidden, forgotten, and lesser-known stories of the 19th century Asia-Pacific. Through individual episodes, it examines trans-imperial entanglements facilitated by the expansion of imperial infrastructure, labor and migration regimes, as well as environmentalism and technology transfer. The regional focus is on Japan, Hawai’i, and the North American West Coast in the northern part of the Pacific Ocean. The goal is to highlight conflicts and frictions in the history of the Asia-Pacific by tracing the darker sides of the supposed success story of modernity: The project writes tensions and mishaps as well as disasters and failures into this history, and it further pushes ruptures, discrepancies, and inconsistencies as analytical categories in historical research.

Besatzungsalltage explores opportunities and challenges of writing a transnational comparative and entangled history of occupied Japan and (West-)Germany after WWII. Based on Japan and Germany’s shared history of military aggression and occupation—both first occupier than occupied—, it will underscore the transnational character of post-WWII occupations at a global moment of decolonization with its historic specific forms of racism as they developed in the 1950s. Pivotal to the project will be analyzing the multiple forms of racist, sexist, and class-based discrimination as well as physical violence in peoples’ everyday life.

This AHRC Curiosity Award project in collaboration with Prof. Constance Bantman (PI; USurrey) and Prof. Richard Cleminson (Co-I; ULeeds) examines the interplay between love and politics through the lens of global anarchist discourse and praxis in the nineteenth and twentieth century. As Co-I, my subproject investigates Japanese anarcho-communist notions of association and cooperation as foundation for developing radical understandings of decentered social organization without hierarchy and (state) authority. Along a series of anarchist couples, it analyzes the place of sexuality, gender and reproduction in anarchist debates about science and nature in imperial Japan.

Radical Utopian Communities analyzed communal life in the first half of the twentieth century all around the world. Despite diverse cultural contexts, political positions, and religious orientations, all these communes developed surprisingly similar strategies to cope with the challenges of the modern world. They were both retreat and hub for activists, reformers, and revolutionaries, facilitating the meeting of people and sharing of ideas and experiences worldwide. The communities in imperial Japan, colonial Jamaica, unionized South Africa, among other places, were showcases for the high degree of mobility and connectivity, but also for working the body in the early twentieth century. Simultaneously, the project critically engaged with the image of borderless mobility and ideals of communal harmony. It thus shed new light on people and communities who too often fall through the cracks of mainstream historiography. Yet radical utopian practices and experiences—as well as analyzing them—also opened up horizons of possibilities for a critical global history as they provided invaluable angles to look at the modern world and its make-up from the margins. The project has been funded by the VolkswagenStiftung in their Freigeist-Fellowship program and was based at LMU Munich’s School of History (Historisches Seminar) and the Munich Centre for Global History. Its results have been published in the Journal of Global History, Modern Asian Studies, Historische Anthropologie, and Cahiers d’histoire. A book is forthcoming based on my Habilitationsschrift (LMU Munich, 2024).

My first book, Sanitized Sex: Regulating Prostitution, Venereal Disease, and Intimacy in Occupied Japan, 1945-1952 (University of California Press, 2017), analyzed sex work and the regulation of sexuality and intimacy during the occupation of Japan after World War II. Based on extensive archival research in Japanese, American, British, and German archives, Sanitized Sex placed the management of sex and its knowledge at the center of a gendered and racialized struggle for authority and sovereignty between the Japanese occupied and American occupiers. In short, the book is more than a study of the sexual encounters in postwar Japan. It offers a reading of the intimacies of empires—defeated and victorious. 
In addition to my book, the results of this research project have been published in the Journal of World History, Journal of Women’s History and Geschichte und Gesellschaft, dealing with sexuality, sex work, and the emergence of postwar Japan, sexual violence in post-surrender Japan, and the occupation of Japan as history of the body. Moreover, a book chapter on the transnational entwinement of prevailing imperial formations in postwar Japan, Korea and matters of sexuality, prostitution and venereal disease appeared in my co-edited volume Global Anti-Vice Activism: Fighting Drinks, Drugs and ‘Immorality’, 1890-1950 (Cambridge University Press, 2016). My chapter “Gender, Sex, and Trans-Imperialism in Postwar Japan” is forthcoming 2026 in the Oxford Handbook of East Asian Gender History.

• Editorial board member, “Radical Histories“ book series, Manchester University Press
• Book review editor, H-Soz-Kult (Japanese and Korean history)
• Reviewer for the Netherland Institute for Advanced Studies (NIAS)
• Review of manuscripts for University of California Press, Columbia University Press, Manchester University Press, Leiden University Press und Lexington Books, Gender & History, Journal of Social History, Journal of Asian Studies, Japan Review, Journal of American Ethnic History, Journal of Women’s History, Journal of Historical Geography, Pacific Affairs, East Asian Science, Technology and Society: An International Journal, Esboços: Histories in Global Contexts, Faravid (Journal for Historical and Archaeological Studies) and Histories.

• Since 2019 Verband der Historiker und Historikerinnen Deutschlands
• Since 2019 Schweizerische Gesellschaft für Geschichte
• Since 2015 Association for Asian Studies

• Ana Maria Spariosu, “The Rise of Intentional Communities in Contemporary Russia, Eastern Europe, and Western Europe: A Comparative, Intercultural Perspective,” European University Institute, Florence (Supervisor: Laura Downs).

• Georg Robert Dietzfelbinger, „Libertalia: Eine Piratenrepublik zwischen Mythos und Aufklärung“, WS 23/24, LMU Munich
• Camila Pinot Moncada, „HIV-positive realities in the Columbian armed confict: Nine testimonies on stigma, discrimination and the perception of the virus“, SoSe 2024, LMU Munich
• Chiara Sophie Koll, „Eine Begriffsgeschichte der Klimagerechtigkeit: Climate Justice im Kontext der US-amerikanischen Environmental Justice Bewegung“, WS 24/25, LMU Munich
• Samuel Teichmann, „Raising our Roots – Identität und Repräsentation im Haus der europäischen Gesichte“, WS 25/26, LMU Munich

Übung:

Theorien und Methoden der Geschichtswissenschaften

Donnerstag, 10 - 12 Uhr

Hegelbau, Raum 505

Beginn 16.04.2026

ETH Zürich:

• 2025 “Cradle of Modernity? Social and Cultural History of Great Britain, c. 1780-1930,” Survey Lecture, Autumn Term 2025.
• 2025 “Modernity, Empire and Conflict: Japan in the 19th and 20th Century,” advanced BA, MA and PhD-level for an interdisciplinary student body, Fall 2025.
• 2015 “History of Sexuality as Global History of the 19th and 20th Century,” advanced BA, MA and PhD-level for an interdisciplinary student body, Spring 2015.
• 2013 “Modernity, Empire and Conflict: Japan in the 19th and 20th Century,” advanced BA, MA and PhD-level for an interdisciplinary student body, Fall 2013, ETH Zurich.

Tokyo College, University of Tokyo:

• 2025 “Methodologies in Global History,” Masterclass, 17-18 April 2025.

Max Weber Foundation Office Georgia, Tiblisi:

• 2024 “De-Centered Global History from the Margins,” Masterclass, 30 Sept. – 2 Oct. 2024.

LMU Munich:

• 2024/25 “Empire and Decolonization in the 19th and 20th Centuries,” advanced BA-level seminar, Winter 2024/25.
• 2023/24 “History from below: Perspective and Approaches on and from 19th and 20th Century History,” MA-Level seminar, Winter 2023/24.
• 2023 “The Uneasiness in History: Psychoanalytical and Post-structuralist approaches in History,” BA-level seminar, Summer 2023.
• 2022 “Life Reform and Communal Life in the 19th and 20th Century,” advanced BA-level seminar, Spring 2022.
• 2022 “History with Marx: Themes, Debates and Perspectives in Marxist Historiography,” BA-level seminar, Spring 2022.
• 2021 “Global History of Anarchism in the 19th and 20th Centuries,” BA-level seminar, Spring 2021.
• 2020 “The Debate about Achille Mbembe: Postcolonialism, Memory and the Politics of History Writing,” advanced BA- and MA-level seminar, Fall 2020/21.

University of Hong Kong:

• 2019 “Anarchism, Radicalism, Utopianism: Actors, Communes and Movements in the Modern World,” advanced BA- and MA-level, Spring 2019.
• 2018 “Gender, Sexuality and Empire,” advanced BA-level seminar, Fall 2018.

University of Tuebingen:

• 2012 “Introduction to Postcolonial Studies: Topics, Theories, Perspectives,” BA-level seminar, Spring 2012.
• 2012 “Korean History I,” BA-level seminar, Spring 2012.ven,” SoSe 2012.
• 2010/11 “The US-Occupation of Japan and Korea,” advanced BA-level seminar, Fall 2010/11.
• 2010/11 “Introduction to Modern Korea,” survey lecture BA-level, Fall 2010/11.
• 2010 “Cultural Studies in Korea,” advanced BA-level seminar, Spring 2010.

University of Erfurt:

• 2008 “Body-Histories: body – machine – sexuality,” BA-level seminar, Spring 2008 (co-teaching with Jürgen Martschukat).