Research projects

Annexations and Secessions in the Age of the Global Cold War

Project management
Dr. Christian Methfessel Duration
10/2018 - 09/2021 Funding
Fritz Thyssen Stiftung:
236 000 €

Christian Methfessel: International borders were surprisingly stable during the Cold War. The project seeks to analyze the reasons for that stability by examining selected territorial conflicts in Africa and South Asia.

CoMOR: "Configurations of European Fairs. Merchants, Objects, Routes (1350-1600)"

Project management
Prof. Dr. Susanne Rau Duration
04/2020 - 10/2023 Funding
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG):
600 000 €

Susanne Rau: "CoMOR" (Configurations of European Fairs. Merchants, Objects, Routes) will examine the history of European fairs from the perspective of increasing market integration in the period from around 1320 (end of the Champagne fairs) to 1630 (decline of the Besançon fairs).

Cooperation Project "Local Politicization of Global Norms"

Project management
Several Duration
01/2014 - 12/2017 Funding
Several donors
490 000 €

André Brodocz: The project examines the conditions under which egalitarian norms with a global claim to validity (such as human rights, sustainability, rule of law) actually find acceptance.

Cultural Techniques. Operationality and Spatialization

Project management
Prof. Dr. Jörg Dünne Duration
01/2015 - 12/2017 Funding
Several donors
299 000 €

Subject of the project "Cultural Techniques. Operationality and Spatialization" (Kulturtechniken. Operationalität und Verräumlichung) deals with the reciprocal constitutional processes of knowledge and action from the perspective of a theory and history of cultural techniques. The specific focus in relation to previous approaches in cultural technology research is on the question of spatialization.

Educational Landscape and Knowledge Culture

Project management
Several Duration
07/2014 - 05/2017 Funding
Several donors
290 000 €

Gotha was one of the most important centres of innovation in early modern European educational history. In the project, collections-based research will be carried out using the educational history sources collected in the 17th and early 18th centuries with the aim of making the hitherto almost unknown holdings accessible to science and the public and demonstrating their potential for international research in educational history.

Globalisation and Local Knowledge

Project management
Prof. Dr. Susanne Rau Duration
09/2012 - 02/2016 Funding
Several donors
300 000 €

The research project is to be understood as a pilot project, which is intended to comprehensively demonstrate the research potential of the cartographic-geographical "The Gotha Perthes Collection" acquired by the Free State of Thuringia in 2003 for the first time. In addition, it is intended to contribute to the further development of the collection and to establish a virtual map laboratory, the "GlobMapLaboratory".

Gotha Numismatica digital

Project management
PD Dr. Monika E. Müller Duration
04/2024 - 12/2024 Funding
Staatskanzlei des Freistaats Thüringen:
80 342 €

The research library preserves an important numismatic collection of historical prints and manuscripts. It is an expression of the collecting interests of the dukes of Gotha and learned numismatists, who were responsible for expanding the numismatic collections at the Gotha court from the end of the 17th century. Among their 225 numismatic manuscripts are famous works such as the Magnum Ac Novum Opus, which Jacopo Strada produced in the mid-16th century, first for Johann Jakob Fugger of Augsburg…

Hidden Histories: Frauen in ländlichen Entwicklungsprogrammen in Indien, c. 1920–1966

Project management
Dr. Maria Framke Duration
08/2021 - 07/2024 Funding
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG):
335 000 €

The project is dedicated to contributions of Indian women to rural development programmes from about 1920 to 1966, following the call to include gender as a category of analysis in the history of development. The aim of the project is to examine the role of women in the design and implementation of governmental and non-governmental rural development projects in India in the key areas of health, education and livelihoods, and in this way to re-capture the processes of development and citizenship.…

Institutionalising the law of nature and nations: The universities of Kiel, Greifswald and Rostock 1648–1806

Project management
Dr. Mikkel Munthe Jensen Duration
07/2022 - 06/2026 Funding
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG):
350 000 €

The project is about the history of the teaching of natural law at the three north German universities in Kiel, Greifswald and Rostock during the period 1648–1806. It is concerned with why, how and to what extent this academic discipline developed in three different political settings along the Baltic coast. The project is based on the general presumption that natural law was of great significance for the period’s intellectual development and state building endeavours. The general aim of the…

KarAfAs – Cartographies of Africa and Asia

Project management
Several Duration
02/2021 - 01/2023 Funding
Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (BMBF):
370 000 €

The subject of this indexing are the maps of Africa and Asia published until 1945 - a total of 35,349 map sheets - as a central core holdings of the Perthes Collection preserved by the Gotha Research Library of the University of Erfurt. The online presentation and permanent storage of the digital copies will take place in the Digital Historical Library Erfurt/Gotha, which is maintained and hosted by the Thuringian University and State Library Jena (ThULB). In this way, the maps will be made…

M.S. Merian – R. Tagore International Centre of Advanced Studies "Metamorphoses of the Political" (ICAS-MP)

Project management
Several Duration
08/2015 - 06/2027 Funding
Several donors
380 519 €

Martin Fuchs: ICAS-MP combines the benefits of an open, interdisciplinary forum for intellectual exchange with the advantages of a cutting-edge research centre. The centre focuses on key political processes that have emerged in parallel in many parts of the world during the twentieth century through to the present day, processes that are entangled yet heterogeneous.

Neopaganism in Contemporary Greece: Beliefs, Practices, and the Symbolic Struggle over Hellenicity/Greekness

Project management
Several Duration
09/2024 - 08/2027 Funding
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG):
342 000 €

The research project examines Neopaganism in contemporary Greece, focussing on beliefs, ritual practices and the symbolic struggle for the Greek heritage. It analyses the many facets of this movement and its critical engagement with the Greek Orthodox Church and state and academic institutions.

Politiken der Wahrheit. Erfurter Forschungsstelle für politische Epistemologien

Project management
Several Duration
01/2023 - 03/2025 Funding
Several donors
349 000 €

The research centre aims to address questions of the political configuration of knowledge and its basic parameters, in particular the social effects of the politics of truth. Institutionally, the research centre serves as a continuation of the university's internally funded research group "Praxeologies of Truth", the networking of corresponding basic research in the humanities and social sciences and a coordinated acquisition of third-party funding.

Postcolonial Hierarchies in Peace and Conflict

Project management
Several Duration
04/2022 - 03/2026 Funding
Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (BMBF):
4 000 000 €

The Network investigates how historically formed postcolonial hierarchies manifest themselves in contemporary conflict dynamics and what implications this has for sustainable conflict transformation in the future. To do so, the Network brings together historical perspectives on the contexts of conflict formation (in particular those shaped by colonialism) with postcolonial research perspectives as well as with methodologies and theories of peace and conflict research.These perspectives are…

Science and Orthodox Christianity around the World (SOW)

Project management
Prof. Dr. Vasilios N. Makrides Duration
01/2016 - 12/2019

Vasilios N. Makrides: The Project SOW - Science & Orthodoxy around the World focuses on the dialogue between science and religion in the Orthodox Christian world. More than 50 specialists from 15 countries participate from various academic fields such as Science, Philosophy, History, Theology and Education.

The birth of rights universalism from reformed international law. The natural law of Heinrich and Samuel Cocceji and its controversial reception in the European Enlightenment

Project management
Dr. Stefanie Ertz Duration
02/2024 - 01/2027 Funding
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG):
317 000 €

The aim of the project, which at the same time further strengthens the focus on natural law at the Gotha Research Centre, is to explore the natural law teachings of Heinrich Cocceji (1644–1719) and his son and editor Samuel Cocceji (1679–1755). In a monograph, Cocceji's natural law, which centres on a theocratic-voluntarist concept of inalienable liberties, will be presented in its political and ideological-historical contexts and in its controversial reception in the European…

Towards Illiberal Constitutionalism in East Central Europe: Historical Analysis in Comparative and Transnational Perspectives

Project management
Dr. Ned Richardson-Little Duration
10/2021 - 09/2025 Funding
VolkswagenStiftung:
376 360 €

Sub-project of Dr. Ned Richardson-Little within the international project "Towards Illiberal Constitutionalism in East Central Europe: Historical Analysis in Comparative and Transnational Perspectives", based at the University of Jena and funded by the Volkswagen Foundation within the framework of the funding programme "Challenges for Europe".

Voluntariness and Repatriation. Transnational Processes of Remigration and Repatriation (1960–2000)

Project management
Dr. Florian Wagner Duration
10/2020 - 09/2023

Subproject of the research group "Voluntariness". This subproject investigates the interactions between principles and practices of voluntariness in transnational migration processes between the 1960s and 2000. These interactions are analyzed in light of the remigration and repatriation of labor migrants, asylum seekers, and refugees, chiefly from the Global North to the Global South. I argue that from the 1960s on, a repatriation regime emerged that sought to legitimize its practices by…

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