PD Dr. Anja Werner

anja.werner@uni-erfurt.de

Project Leader of the DFG Research Project: Black and Deaf Western Missionaries and Deaf Education in Ghana and Nigeria: The Story of Berta and Andrew Foster - A Case Study in Global History (Centre for Transcultural Studies / Perthes Collection)

Office hours

nach Vereinbarung

Visiting address

Forschungskolleg Transkulturelle
Studien / Sammlung Perthes
Schloss Friedenstein – Pagenhaus
Schlossplatz 1
99867 Gotha

Mailing address

Forschungskolleg Transkulturelle
Studien / Sammlung Perthes
Schloss Friedenstein – Pagenhaus
Schlossplatz 1
99867 Gotha

Postdoc at the Chair of Modern and Contemporary History and History Didactics (History Department)

Office hours

nach Vereinbarung

Visiting address

Campus
Nordhäuser Str. 63
99089 Erfurt

Mailing address

Universität Erfurt
Historisches Seminar
Neuere und Zeitgeschichte und Geschichtsdidaktik
Postfach 90 02 21
99105 Erfurt

PD Dr. Anja Werner

About Me

Extended CV

Publications

Anja Werner currently directs a research group funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) at the Research Centre for Transcultural Studies / Perthes Collection in Gotha, University of Erfurt. She completed her second dissertation (Habilitation) in modern and contemporary history at the Chair of Modern and Contemporary History at the University of Erfurt in 2023.

Research Foci

  • Modern and Contemporary History (19th and 20th Century)
  • History of Education, the Sciences and the Humanities
  • Public History, especially via Motion Comics
  • Diversity History and Black History
  • Transcultural History of the Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing

Working Group on Accessibility

Since 2021, I have been a founding member of the Working Group on Accessibility at the University of Erfurt. Further information and guidlines for download are available at the Website of the Working Group on Accessibility.

Deaf History Network

From 2020 to 2024, I coordinated with Marion Schmidt, PhD the Deaf History Network in German-speaking countries. We published two multi-author volumes in 2024 and 2019. For our 2024 volume,  Summaries in German sign language (DGS) are available online.

Motion Comics as Memory Work

With groups of student, between 2021 and 2023, I produced  Public History motion comics about the inner-German border including also the perspectives of persons with migration experiences. The project "MoCom: Motion Comics as Memory Work" was funded by the Federal German initiative "Jugend erinnert" ("young people remember"). Four MoCom motion comics are available online.

With Dr. Sarah Fichtner I published an article about the production of our very first motion comic "Ghost Train" (2020), which inspired our MoCom-project.

Anja Werner and Sarah Fichtner, “Connecting across Divides: A Case Study in Public History of the (E­‑) Motion Comic Ghost Train—Memories of Ghost Trains and Ghost Stations in Former East and West-Berlin.” In (An)Archive: Childhood, Memory, and the Cold War, eds. Zsuzsanna Millei, Iveta Silova, and Nelli Piattoeva. The Open Book Publishers, OBP, 2024.

Ongoing Research

“Black and Deaf Western Missionaries and Deaf Education in Ghana and Nigeria: The Story of Berta and Andrew Foster—A Case Study in Global History“

In this research project, I examine deaf missionaries Andrew and Berta Foster, who starting in 1957 founded more than 30 schools and churches for the deaf in thirteen African countries. Andrew Foster was an African American from the segregated South of the United States. Berta Zuther was born under national socialism and grew up in West Berlin during the early Cold War. They met at the 3rd World Congress of the World Federation of the Deaf in Wiesbaden in 1959 and got married in Nigeria in 1961. Tracing the Foster’s story allows me to explore intertwined aspects of deaf education in regional and local contexts on three different continents. It does not simply mean to write a biography of two deaf missionaries but to create an exemplary case study in global history that comprises transcultural, interdisciplinary, and intersectional elements and is set against the backdrop of decolonization, civil rights movements, and the Cold War.

Project Website
Website of PD Dr. Anja Werner ar Research Centre Transcultural Studies / Perthes Collection (Gotha)

Selected Books

Second book (Habilitation of second dissertation):

Anja Werner, »Deaf History« als Wissenschaftsgeschichte. Die Teilhabe gehörloser Menschen an Fachdiskursen über Taubheit im geteilten Deutschland [Deaf History as history of the science and the humanities. Participation of d/Deaf persons in expert discourses about hearing loss in the divided Germany]. Reihe Wissenschaftsgeschichte (Bielefeld: transcript, 2024).

 Dissertation:

Anja Werner, The Transatlantic World of Higher Education. Americans at German Universities, 1776-1914 (New York/Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2013).

Edited Multi-Author Volumes:

Anja Werner und Marion Schmidt (Hg.), Unsichtbare Geschichte(n) sichtbar machen. Gehörlose und schwerhörige Menschen im deutschsprachigen Raum vom 19. Jahrhundert bis in die Gegenwart [Making invisible (his-)stories visible. Deaf and hard-of-hearing people in German-speaking countries from the 19th century to the present] (Frankfurt: Campus, 2024).

Online-summaries in German sign language (DGS) for the 2024 multi-author volume

Kendahl Radcliffe, Jennifer Scott, and Anja Werner (eds.), Anywhere But Here. Black Intellectuals in the Atlantic World and Beyond (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2015 [hardcover] / 2017 [softcover]).

Marion Schmidt und Anja Werner (Hg.), Zwischen Fremdbestimmung und Autonomie. Neue Impulse zur Gehörlosengeschichte in Deutschland, Österreich und der Schweiz [Between heteronomy and autonomy. New impulses about Deaf History in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland] (Bielefeld: transcript, 2019).

 

Buchcover Werner, Deaf History als Wissenschaftsgeschichte