Research projects

B C D E F G I J K L M N P R S T U V W

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

Project management
PD Dr. Anja Werner Duration
07/2022 - 06/2025 Funding
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG):
356 650 €

Anja Werner: 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.

Cartographic sources and territorial transformations of Ethiopia since the late 18th century - ETHIOMAP

Project management
Prof. Dr. Iris Schröder Duration
01/2016 - 01/2019 Funding
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG):
106 000 €

The research project consists of two partner projects which are being carried out in parallel in France (funded by the ANR) and in Germany (funded by the DFG). The aim of the research project is the systematic collection, classification and analysis of historical maps from and about Ethiopia, which are often unknown in Ethiopian research.

Charts - Oceans

Project management
Several Duration
07/2018 - 04/2022 Funding
Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (BMBF):
1 100 000 €

Iris Schröder & Felix Schürmann: Maps have hitherto led a marginal existence in the history of globalization. Sea and ocean charts receive even less attention, despite their unique visualization of maritime spaces and their inherent global connections. The aim of the joint project is to use sea and ocean charts to tell a little-known story in the period of transformation dating from the mid-19th to the mid-20th century.

Cinema in the GDR – Reception History 'from Below'

Project management
Several Duration
06/2019 - 05/2022 Funding
Several donors
456 000 €

Christiane Kuller: Until now, the history of GDR cinema has been written primarily as a history of state film policy and production, with research largely ignoring the perspective of moviegoers. This is the point of departure for the citizen science research project "Cinema in the GDR", whose goal is to develop an everyday history of GDR cinema together with contemporary witnesses.

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).

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.

Damigeron, De Lapidibus

Project management
Prof. Dr. Kai Brodersen Duration
01/2015 - 06/2015 Funding
Margaret Braine Fellowship der University of Western Australia:
25 000 €

More than 70 healing stones with their healing (or damaging) effects are presented by the ancient author Damigeron (2nd century A.D.) in this almost 2000 year old book, which was highly famous for centuries. For the first time, the work is critically edited, translated and indexed.

Digital Indexing of the Estate of Jan Tschichold

Project management
Prof. Dr. Dr. Patrick Rössler Duration
10/2019 - 04/2021 Funding
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG):
110 000 €

Patrick Rössler: The importance of pictoral representations in the process of political communications is undisputed, but little is known about the standards of media image reporting in the first half of the 20th century. The aim of the proposed research project is therefore identifying empirically supported findings on longer, possibly even decades-spanning developments in this area, in order to arrive at statements about continuities and discontinuities in visual political communication and to…

Edition of the Correspondence of Johann Friedrich Blumenbach

Project management
Prof. Dr. Martin Mulsow Duration
04/2010 - 10/2015 Funding
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG):
336 998 €

The project was dedicated to the indexing of the correspondence of Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (1752-1840), a central figure in the biological and geological science of the late 18th century, which is of great importance in the history of science.

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.

Establishment of a cross-university "Scientific Coordination Unit for Dealing with the Colonial Heritage in Thuringia".

Project management
Prof. Dr. Christiane Kuller Duration
09/2021 - 08/2024 Funding
Several donors
300 000 €

The coordination unit builds on the existing expertise on the topic of "colonial heritage" at the Universities of Erfurt and Jena and aims to network and strengthen activities in the future with regard to research, teaching and social dialogue.

Establishment of an oral history research centre

Duration
09/2021 - 09/2025

The research centre focuses on the "East German experience". The research centre takes up the specifics of the GDR and transformation period and discusses the methodology of oral history in this context. As a central institution of this kind in the East German Länder, the research centre is to be expanded into a supra-regional centre and, in terms of its design, be a building block of the nationwide network of oral history institutions that is currently being established.

Expansion of the Gotha Research Library into a Research and Study Centre for the Cultural History of Protestantism in the Early Modern Period

Project management
Dr. Kathrin Paasch Duration
03/2015 - 02/2018 Funding
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG):
534 000 €

The Gotha Research Library preserves an outstanding collection of sources on the cultural history of Protestantism in the early modern period. This is the basis of the six-year infrastructure project funded by the DFG (German Research Foundation), in which the library combines coordinated activities for the cataloguing and preservation of this important and hitherto largely unexplored material with the further development of its digital services and transfers the results of its work to science…

Forgotten Bauhaus Women. Fates of life in the 1930s and 1940s

Project management
Prof. Dr. Dr. Patrick Rössler Duration
10/2021 - 01/2022

Patrick Rössler: The exhibition project "Forgotten Bauhaus Women" by the University of Erfurt and the Klassik Stiftung Weimar is dedicated to researching these fates, of which more than thirty will be presented at the Bauhaus Museum Weimar from October 2021.

German Media Language Abroad

Project management
Prof. Dr. Dr. Csaba Földes Duration
04/2019 - 03/2022 Funding
Kulturstaatsministerin für Kultur und Medien (BKM):
122 000 €

The main objective of the proposed project is the scientific research and documentation of the current German media language abroad using the example of the German minority press in Central and Eastern Europe.

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…

Illuminati Essays in the Context of the Late Enlightenment

Project management
Prof. Dr. Martin Mulsow Duration
05/2013 - 11/2016 Funding
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG):
503 000 €

Previous research on the Illuminati has concentrated mainly on their organisational structure and on the so-called 'higher knowledge'. Consequently, the documents of the order have so far been mainly printed documents, degree drafts and the correspondence of the leading members among each other. In contrast to this, the project pursued at the Gotha Research Centre focuses on a completely new corpus of sources, which has so far hardly been considered by research.

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…

Jacopo Stradas Magnum ac Novum Opus

Project management
Prof. Dr. Martin Mulsow Duration
11/2015 - 05/2022 Funding
Several donors
1 263 000 €

Jacopo Strada (ca. 1515-1588), antiquarian, architect and antique dealer, created a corpus of 30 volumes, the Magnum ac Novum Opus, for his patron Johann Jakob Fugger in the mid-16th century. The project is intended to bring together the entire corpus for the first time, analyse it in its historical and artistic context, research its sources and work out its significance for the history of numismatics and antiquarian research in the 16th century.

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…

Kulturtechniken des Sammelns (Cooperation project Cultural Techniques of Collecting)

Project management
Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Struck Duration
01/2023 - 12/2025 Funding
Several donors
335 000 €

The project serves to establish a sustainable research infrastructure that connects the research group "Kulturtechniken des Sammelns" (Cultural Techniques of Collecting) at the University of Erfurt and other researchers at the Universities of Weimar and Jena with the various collection institutions in Gotha.

Lived Ancient Religion – Questioning "Cults" and "Polis Religion"

Project management
Prof. Dr. Jörg Rüpke Duration
06/2013 - 05/2017 Funding
European Research Council (ERC):
2 300 000 €

Jörg Rüpke: This project, funded by the European Research Council (ERC), takes a completely new perspective on the religious history of Mediterranean antiquity, starting from the individual and "lived" religion instead of cities or peoples. "Lived ancient religion" suggests a set of experiences, of practices addressed to, and conceptions of the divine, which are appropriated, expressed, and shared by individuals in diverse social spaces.

Martyrdom and Voluntariness. Discourse and Practice in the European High and Late Middle Ages

Project management
Prof. Dr. Sabine Schmolinsky Duration
10/2020 - 09/2023

Subproject of the research group "Voluntariness". The subproject analyzes martyrdom as a discourse and as a practice of men and women in high and late medieval centuries.

Moving Networks

Project management
Prof. Dr. Dr. Patrick Rössler Duration
01/2013 - 02/2016 Funding
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG):
450 000 €

Patrick Rössler: Although the institutional framework of the leading art and design school of its time disintegrated with the closure of the Bauhaus in April 1933, it continued to exist as a virtual structure of various networks of its members, which were to be examined empirically and whose formation often went back far into the history of the school. From this perspective, the history of the Bauhaus during the politically explosive period of the 1930s and 1940s can be continued in a…

Nutrition, Health and Modern Society: Germany and the United States

Project management
Prof. Dr. Jürgen Martschukat Duration
10/2015 - 10/2018 Funding
VolkswagenStiftung:
1 000 000 €

The research project aims to work out the significance of nutrition and health for the order of modern societies from the 19th century to the present. The empirical focus is on the USA and Germany, so that regional differences as well as the dynamics of interdependence in globalizing constellations become apparent.

Paths and Works of Michael Kosmeli (1773-1844). A forgotten key figure in the trans-Ottoman corridor and context

Project management
Dr. Dirk Sangmeister Duration
03/2021 - 02/2024 Funding
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG):
300 000 €

The versatile writer, polyglot translator and virtuoso Jew's harp player Kosmeli, who travelled restlessly for decades in the space between Germany and Eastern Europe on the one hand and the Ottoman Empire together with Persia on the other, was acquainted with prominent contemporaries such as Adelbert von Chamisso, Jean Paul and the Orientalist Joseph (von) Hammer(-Purgstall), also told Goethe "much about Constantinople and the Orient" in Jena in 1809, but is today a completely forgotten figure.…

Property and habit. On the political anthropology of ownership in Western modernity

Project management
Several Duration
01/2021 - 12/2024

Subproject in the SFB TRR294 "Structural Change of Property". The project is dedicated to the political anthropology of ownership between the eighteenth and early twentieth century. It investigates an assumption that is widespread in the humanities: that ownership structures bring about the formation of specific habits.

Property in one’s own body and in the bodies of others in the United States between the eighteenth and twentieth century

Project management
Several Duration
01/2021 - 12/2024

Subproject in the SFB TRR294 "Structural Change of Property". The subproject explores the ownership of others’ bodies based on the history of slavery in the USA.

Protecting Academia At Risk: Towards a New Policy Agenda for a Thriving Culture of higher education in Europe

Project management
Prof. Dr. Bernhard Kleeberg Duration
03/2024 - 02/2026 Funding
Gerda Henkel Stiftung:
183 000 €

The current situation of academia at risk in the European landscape raises three distinct research questions. First, what is the current institutional framework that responds to academic displacement in Europe? Second, what are the normative contours of protecting academic freedom in future democratic societies? Third, how does an improved system of integrating displaced academics connect to broader values such as the protection of a thriving academic culture? This project builds on our seed…

Reaching for Atlantis

Project management
Dr. Bernhard Schirg Duration
03/2018 - 02/2023 Funding
VolkswagenStiftung:
1 000 000 €

In his project, the historian wants to investigate the history of objects that were the subject of a fundamental reinterpretation of material culture at the time of the Swedish Empire (1650-1720).

Religious Diversity and Peace Ethics

Project management
Prof. Dr. Jamal Malik Duration
01/2016 - 12/2017 Funding
Auswärtiges Amt (Berlin):
387 000 €

Jamal Malik: As part of the research and dialogue project funded by the Federal Foreign Office (Auswärtiges Amt), the Professorship for Islamic Studies sought cooperation with Pakistani theological schools, thus building a bridge between traditional Islamic teaching there and local Islamic Studies that is unique in this country.

Research Group "Voluntariness"

Project management
Several Duration
10/2020 - 03/2027 Funding
Several donors
4 120 551 €

Jürgen Martschukat, Christiane Kuller, Sabine Schmolinsky, Iris Schröder: In this project, the researchers will examine voluntariness as a driving force of human practices in the past and present. The central question is how Western pre-modern and modern, but also non-European societies and subjects are governed through the principle of voluntariness. This includes, for example, religiously motivated voluntariness in medieval martyrdom as well as voluntary "participation" in dictatorships. The…

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.

Spaces and Objects

Project management
Prof. Dr. Susanne Rau Duration
07/2013 - 12/2016 Funding
Stiftung Mercator:
145 000 €

The research project serves as a preparation for teaching and research in the field of collections-based history of knowledge and culture. The funding will benefit the initiation and further development of the new M.A. programme in "Collections-Based History of Knowledge and Culture", which the university has been offering since the winter semester 2014/15.

Stategies of Collecting an Displaying China in Nineteenth-Century Germany: Gotha's Chinese Cabinet

Project management
Dr. Emily Teo Duration
05/2021 - 04/2024 Funding
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG):
300 000 €

My research project brings renewed attention to a significant Chinese collection in early-nineteenth-century Germany, the Chinese Cabinet in Gotha, established by Duke Emil August (1772–1822) of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg from 1804 to 1810. Consisting of over 2000 objects, the Cabinet was a great sensation during the first decades of the nineteenth-century and was described as the most important Chinese collection in continental Europe. However, following the establishment of national museums across…

The Historical Sources of the Reformation and Historiography of the Early 18th Century at Friedenstein Castle Gotha

Project management
Dr. Kathrin Paasch Duration
05/2014 - 04/2017 Funding
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG):
270 000 €

The Gotha Research Library preserves a top-class collection on the cultural history of Protestantism in the early modern period, which was compiled by the Dukes of Saxony-Gotha. An essential component of this unique handwritten tradition, which reaches far beyond the Central German cultural area, is the estate of the theologian and church historian Ernst Salomon Cyprian (1673-1745), which is to be catalogued in the project.

The Mission of the English Philadelphians in Germany, Building Networks and the Spoken Transmission of their Ideology

Project management
Dr. Lucinda Martin Duration
07/2014 - 07/2017 Funding
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG):
261 998 €

In the Gotha Research Library, there is a geographically arranged 'Catalogus amicorum in Germania', which served the Philadelphians as a starting point for their German mission, together with a volume of letters from this group. In addition, there are important holdings in other archives which have also received little attention from scientists. Based on these sources, the project will reconstruct the early network of the Philadelphians between England and Germany as well as the social and…

The Visualization of the Political in German Magazines 1905 to 1945

Project management
Prof. Dr. Dr. Patrick Rössler Duration
04/2016 - 10/2019 Funding
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG):
200 000 €

Urban property regimes and citizenship in transition. Changing ownership patterns and systems of relatedness in India

Project management
Several Duration
01/2021 - 12/2024

Subproject in the SFB TRR294 "Structural Change of Property". The study seeks to harness the explicatory power of property for understanding the shifting societal systems and their underlying normative frameworks in post-liberalised India.

Voluntariness and Decolonization. The Regulation of Labor in (Post-)Colonial Ghana

Project management
Prof. Dr. Iris Schröder Duration
10/2020 - 09/2023

Subproject in the research group "Voluntariness". This subproject focuses on voluntariness during an era of decolonization and thus on a political principle of (post-)colonial governance. Drawing on the case of the British Gold Coast/Ghana, we explore how voluntary action shaped the political and social order during the transition from late colonial “indirect rule” to independence, while examining how voluntariness became a political and social norm and resource. Our key focus is on the…

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…

What is Western about the West?

Project management
Prof. Dr. Holt Meyer Duration
02/2018 - 01/2021 Funding
Several donors
420 000 €

The project focuses on spatio-temporal practices regarding the production and representation of westernness. With the question of what is Western about the West, it takes up a highly political and socially relevant question.

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