In my dissertation, I reconstruct the history of Walter Benjamin's afterlife along the conflicts surrounding his scattered archives. (Robert Pursche)

What is the relationship between race, gender and capitalism? The role of motherhood in racial capitalism and the scientification of the “Ghetto economy” serve as two intersecting lenses in this project that provide new perspectives on the history of capitalism since the late 1960s. (Nadja Klopprogge)

This research project examines the role of British and West German women's movements in negotiating new concepts of sexuality, the body and health between 1968 and 1989. By focusing on the mechanisms of knowledge production and transformation, the project breaks with the master narrative of the 'sexual revolution' and instead highlights the different interpretative struggles around sexuality and the body within the women's movements. (Kassandra Hammel)

The habilitation project investigatesthe history of “indigeneity” and the political strategies based on this concept from the 1830s to the 1980s. It examines how the concept of indigeneity was used to organize the world, the interests behind such perceptions and descriptions, and the legal and political consequences resulting from the corresponding assumptions. (Martin Deuerlein)

Between national spaces of historical enquiry on the one hand and global history on the other: What are European history’s contributions to understanding the past – and the present? What are its challenges at present, and how can they be met? (Sonja Levsen)

The medical knowledge and techniques necessary to perform gender affirmative care were produced during the long 19^th century in different contexts and were not intended to serve for this purpose. This study searches for actors who reinterpreted this body of knowledge and advanced it to today’s standards. It also traces how the bodies of transgender* people became in this process an arena for negotiating the line between concepts of heterosexual feminity and masculinity as well as their subversions. (Katharina Seibert)

The project focuses on Western European magazines that have emerged from the Second Wave feminist movements since the 1970s. Information on the various magazines will be collected in a database. A website with expert contributions will combine national overviews with transnational thematic perspectives. (Kassandra Hammel & Sonja Levsen)

In my project, I am interested in a history of knowledge and the environmental history of the search for water from a trans-imperial perspective (British and German Empire, USA). Therefore, I investigate practices and forms of knowledge of the search for water, especially in imperial expansion movements since the late 19^th century and into the age of decolonization. I focus on arid regions in Southwest Africa, East Africa and the USA. (Robert Pursche)

This book project (Habilitation) retraces the history of the meaning, making, and presentation of ‘Africana’ across the Atlantic from the late 19^th to the early 21^st century. (Nadja Klopprogge)