RESEARCH CROSSING BOUNDARIES GHIL Research LIST OF PROJECTS Our Research STEPHAN BRUHN Heavenly Hierarchies and Profane Prestige: Imagining and Shaping Social Order in Post-Roman England and the Frankish World c.400–850 The project explores the perception and (re)negotiation of status and social order in post-Roman western Europe by comparatively analysing the definition and implementation of hierarchies in the Frankish World and Anglo-Saxon England. It focuses on the records of church councils and synods, regarding these assemblies as crucial for the development of new societal models in an age of transition. British History Project Page MARCUS MEER Censoring, Defacing, and Erasing Visual Matters in the European City 1300–1500 In the cities of late medieval Europe, practices of censoring, defacing, and erasing visual matters served both townspeople and their noble antagonists as powerful means of communication. In the socio-political conflicts that affected and divided urban societies, these practices supported and challenged powerful individuals, political institutions, social hierarchies, and urban spaces alike. European Persepectives Project Page DIPANWITA DONDE Migration of Images, Texts, Ideas, and Objects from Timurid Central Asia to Mughal India 16th–18th centuries The project examines meanings, intentions, and ideas concealed in Mughal paintings that point to transcultural encounters between central Asia and Mughal India. These hidden riddles reveal a rich archive of historical, political, social and cultural memory, woven into a distinct pictorial tapestry, for constructing a legitimate dynastic identity for Mughal emperors in India. BMBF-funded third party project: Bilderfahrzeuge: Aby Warburg’s Legacy and the Future of Iconology Project page COLLABORATIVE PROJECT The Prize Papers Project Cataloguing – Digitization – Presentation The papers from the High Court of Admiralty Prize Court collection (1664–1817) at the National Archives, Kew consist of documents and objects from ships that were legally taken as prizes in maritime warfare. The lawfulness of the capture had to be confirmed by the Court, who retained the papers. This collection, together with the corresponding process files, has been preserved largely untouched and unsorted as the only surviving collection of its kind in Europe. The aim of the project is the complete digitization of the Prize Papers, including the preservation of the collection’s material dimension, the initial and in-depth cataloguing, the creation of research-oriented metadata, and finally the presentation of the digital copies and the metadata in an open-access research database. University of Oldenburg in cooperation with the National Archives, Kew and the GHIL Project Page MICHAEL SCHAICH Webs of Information Scribal News and News Cultures around 1700 Why would a well-educated man or woman subscribe, at great cost, to a hand-written newsletter when cheaper newspapers were already easily available? This project investigates the so far largely hidden sphere of scribal news in a world dominated by the printing press, and follows the flows of information that ran between Britain and the Continent in the years around 1700. British History Project Page COLLABORATIVE PROJECT Pauper Letters and Petitions for Poor Relief in Germany and Great Britain, 1770–1914 Andreas Gestrich (University of Trier) and Steven King (University of Leicester) Pauper letters and applications for relief contain sometimes rudimentary but often extensive information on the applicants’ material situation, their family circumstances, and their relationships with their home parish, or specific officials or friends from whom they expect support. This project proposes to collect and edit a substantial online corpus of these narratives. British History/European Perspectives Project Page MARKUS MÖSSLANG British Envoys to Germany (1816–1897) The editorial project presents a comprehensive selection of diplomatic reports written for the Foreign Office by British envoys to the German States in the 19th century, covering the period from the Vienna Congress in 1815 to the dissolution of the German Confederation (Deutscher Bund) in 1866, the North German Confederation (1867–1870), and from the foundation of the German Kaiserreich in 1871 to 1897. British History Project Page MIRJAM BRUSIUS The Spaces of Photography Colonial and Global History This project explores not only the actual photographs, but also their detachment from their original archival context, their circulation on the art market, and their display across different types of museums and institutions. This is done in order to determine the disciplinary framework for studying early photographic specimens, whether scientific, industrial, or colonial. Project Page MIRJAM BRUSIUS Empire, Heritage, and the Decolonization Debate This project gives a transregional perspective on museums, collecting, and fieldwork as an imperial enterprise incorporating the British Empire, France, and Prussia. It shows how emerging survey methods and disciplines such as archaeology were instrumentalized in political, orientalist and racial discourse in the increasingly contested landscape of the Ottoman Empire. Colonial and Global History Project Page INDRA SENGUPTA Preserving India’s Past Law, Bureaucracy and Historical Conservation in Colonial India 1904–1925 Taking the 1904 Ancient Monuments Preservation Act as a point of entry, this project examines the relationship between colonial law, its implementation by colonial bureaucracy, and the ‘making’ of historic monuments in India under British rule. The study focuses on Hindu religious structures. It looks beyond policy-making and analyses the many ways in which Indians exercised agency when faced with state power ‘on site’. Colonial and Global History Project page PASCALE SIEGRIST A Secret Artifice Language Invention in the Age of Global English The project understands the inventing of a language – whether for political, epistemic, or artistic purposes – as an act of world-making. Focusing on the proliferation of artificial languages in the English-speaking world in the period from the 1920s to the 1980s, the project situates these initiatives in the context of wider debates concerning the universality or cultural relativity of language. British History Project page EMILY STEINHAUER Intellectual Lives and Gender in Exile What constitutes an intellectual? How do we define intellectual labour? Does the intellectual have a gender? These are some of the questions central to the project on the ‘female intellectual emigration’, ca.1930–1960. Focusing on sociologists, psychoanalysts, and psychologists, it asks about their place in intellectual history, feminism, and the social history of ‘the intellectual’. British History Project page ROBERT RAHMAN RAMAN From Girangaon to ‘Mini Pakistan’ The Precarious Place of Working Muslims in 20th-Century Bombay The project explores the transformation of localities in Bombay from 'working-class neighbourhoods' with many Muslim inhabitants in the early decades of 20th century into 'Muslim neighbourhoods' (or 'Mini-Pakistan') in public discourse and in the changing politics of Bombay in the years following India’s independence. The study is based on Girangaon, the erstwhile mill district of the city. Colonial and Global History Project page RESEARCH GROUP Education and the Urban in India since the 19th Century Focusing on major Indian cities, the research group examines the relation between education and the urban as a category in Indian society, which has undergone rapid and complex processes of urbanisation in the seven decades since independence from colonial rule in 1947. The project is conducted by Principal Investigators from Jawaharlal Nehru University (New Delhi), the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (Mumbai) and the National Institute of Advance Studies (Bengaluru) along with the Head of the IRP. Colonial and Global History Project page DEBARATI BAGCHI Education Hubs and the Changing Urban Landscape in the Delhi National Capital Region (NCR) 1949–2009 My project explores the complex connections between higher education institutions and the history of urbanization in post-colonial India. In order to understand the relationship between land, the rental economy and university neighbourhood relations, I focus on two sites in the Delhi National Capital Region in the context of higher education policy between the University Commission of 1948 and the National Knowledge Commission of 2007. Colonial and Global History Project page SINA STEGLICH Nomadism as a Discursive Figure of (Post)Modernity Modernity and mobility are ambivalently intertwined, whereby nomadism can be understood as a focal point of modernity’s self-conception as modernity. Nomadism was excluded from the European/Western concept of modernity until it was rediscovered by postmodern thinkers and intellectuals. Against this backdrop, it is proposed that nomadism be identified as a prominent discursive figure of (post)modernity that calls for a continued reflection on sociality. European Perspectives Project Page ICAS History as a Political Category ICAS: 'Metamorphosis of the Political' M.S. Merian – R. Tagore International Centre of Advanced Studies Colonial and Global History ICAS: MP JANE FREELAND AND CHRISTINA VON HODENBERG Medialization and Empowerment International Standing Working Group The International Standing Working Group on Medialization and Empowerment explores the connections between the mass media and the proliferation of women’s rights and feminist movements in the long 20th century. Drawing on the histories of media, feminism and gender, the group examines how the media has shaped women’s rights. Colonial and Global History Project Page CHRISTINA VON HODENBERG Ageing and 'Doing Gender' in the Era of Value Change To what extent did old people, especially ageing women, play an active part in the processes of value change that transformed West Germany and Britain from the 1960s to the 1980s? Contemporary historians have often pointed to student protests and generational conflict between fathers and sons to explain cultural change. In contrast, this project explores the gendered subtext of value conflicts and the agency of women and the elderly. European Perspectives Project page CHRISTINA VON HODENBERG Writing Contemporary History with Social Data: Plans for a Digital Infrastructure Historians working on the second half of the 20th century are confronted with new types of sources: so-called social data. These are the remains of state-sponsored data collection or social science research projects, and include tax data, polls, psychological interviews and participant observations. Such data can appear in obsolete formats such as punchcards or magnetic tapes, and may be found in retired researchers’ attics rather than in archives. The GHIL has teamed up with external partners to tackle the challenges tied to the re-use of social data by historians. European Perspectives Project page WILLIAM KING AND DAVID LAWTON Euroscepticism This project explores the important and understudied history of Euroscepticism in Britain. It seeks to build on existing conceptions of Euroscepticism and examine the impact and role of Eurosceptic views in British society and politics. Focusing on Britain during the 1970s–90s, the project forms one key pillar in a wider collaborative project with colleagues at the German Historical Institutes in Rome and Warsaw, and the Hamburg Institute for Social Research. British History Project Page INDRA SENGUPTA Selling History: Tourist Guides, Bazaar Histories, and the Politics of the Past in India the late 20th and early 21st Centuries This project examines historical tourist guidebooks and locally produced historical tracts that circulate around historical/heritage sites in Murshidabad in eastern India. The aim is to understand the mutually constitutive relationship between popular regional ideas of the past and the changing political sphere in India since the late decades of the previous century. Colonial and Global History Project Page COLLABORATIVE PROJECT Bilderfahrzeuge Aby Warburg’s Legacy and the Future of Iconology ‘Bilderfahrzeuge’, literally meaning image vehicles, is a term coined by the German art historian Aby Warburg (1866-1929). It refers to a concept that was of the utmost importance for Warburg, since his work sought to trace lines of continuity linking Antiquity with the Renaissance – lines that he felt materialised out of ‘Bildwanderung’, the migration of images. BMBF-funded third party project: Bilderfahrzeuge: Aby Warburg’s Legacy and the Future of Iconology Read more Contact and Enquiries German Historical Institute London 17 Bloomsbury Square London WC1A 2NJ Tel. +44-(0)20 7309 2050 Data Protection and Legal Notice Follow the GHIL Blog Subscribe to the GHIL Newsletter Browse the Library Catalogue