Archive
Event information - 11.07.2024
Hardly anything stirs public opinion as much as the question of how many and which asylum seekers Germany should take in. Klaus Neumann's German history since the fall of the Berlin Wall sheds light on the negotiation processes surrounding the accommodation of GDR migrants, asylum seekers, ethnic German resettlers, and war refugees. His case studies from Hamburg and Saxony cover a wide range of local reactions and show how hospitality and fear of strangers were intertwined with attitudes towards racism and right-wing violence, the demand for democratic participation, and the desire to represent a reformed Germany.
With reference to this, the Chair of Global History cordially invites you to a reading followed by a discussion by Klaus Neumann on his book: "Blumen und Brandsätze : eine deutsche Geschichte 1989-2023", on Thursday, July 11, 2024, 18 s.t. in the Stadt- und Landesbibliothek Potsdam in the Bildungsforum (main library).
Click here for the poster of the event
„Inbegriff eines Gelehrten und Humanisten“ – How Gera Gizaw from a refugee camp wants to make the world a better place
Gera Gizaw is on the run. Persecuted in Ethiopia, he fled to Kenya, where he has lived for over ten years. But Gizaw is also a teacher, historian and, since January 2024, winner of the Voltaire Prize for Tolerance, International Understanding and Respect for Difference at the University of Potsdam.
Click here for the report on how this came about: in three parts.
Global history colloquium in the summer semester 2024
The professorship of Global History invites you to the small Global History Colloquium in the summer semester 2024.
All information on the individual lectures can be found here.
Professor Marcia C. Schenck receives a Yerun Open Science Award for her work with the Global History Dialogues Project.
Click here for the press release of the University of Potsdam.
The Professorship of Global History at the University of Potsdam is thrilled to announce that much esteemed colleague Gerawork Teferra Gizaw has been awarded the “Voltaire Prize for Tolerance, International Understanding and Respect for Difference”. This year, the prize has been awarded to two impressive scholars: Olga Shparaga abd Gerawork Gizaw, see the University of Potsdam Press Release here.
Book presentation - Remembering African Labor Migration to the Second World at the University of Vienna
Prof. Dr. Maria Schenck will present her latest book at the University of Vienna on 17.11.23.
More information about the event can be found here.
Invited Talks
The professorship of Global History invites you to two book talks and one invited talk this semester.
Book Talk on 07.11.2023, 6-8 p.m.
Mariana Candido: Wealth, Land, and Property in Angola
Book Talk on 06.12.2023, 6-8 p.m.
Morgan J. Robinson: A Language for the World: The Standardization of Swahili
Invited Talk on 19.12.2023, 6-8 p.m.
Harold James: Cycles of globalization and deglobalization
The events will be held in English.
Please refer to the posters for more detailed information.
History Dialogues Project insummer semester 2023
In the summer semester 2023 Potsdam University students and students from all over the world are invited to participate in the History Dialogues Project. The course combines online formats with formats in situ, thereby offering what the anthropologist Arjun Appadurai calls the “Right to Research”: It offers students a first hand experience of historical-anthropological research. They are first introduced to methods of historical research, in particular oral history methods. On these grounds, they develop their own topic and collect (oral) sources for their research project. They present their work to co-students at the international partner organisations and discuss it on the background of global history approaches. The seminar is a part of the Global History Lab at Princeton University and is jointly taught with partners in North America, Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Through this cooperation, students in Potsdam have the opportunity to study global history in a genuinely international setting and to reflect on the tension between local and global approaches to history, as well as on their own role as citizens of the world. The blog Global History Dialogues has collected the work of former participants in the course. In the summer semester the course is taught by Dr. Sabine Rutar
New Release – The Right to Research
The professorship is thrilled to announce the publication of the edited volume The Right to Research: Historical Narratives by Refugee and Global South Researchers as part of McGill-Queen’s Refugee and Forced Migration Studies Series. Edited by Marcia Schenck and Kate Reed, it features nine contributions by refugee and host-community researchers from Across Africa, Europe and the Middle East.
Joanna Tague professor at Denison University and author of Displaced Mozambicans in Postcolonial Tanzania: Refugee Power, Mobility, Education, and Rural Development has this to say about the book:
“This ambitious and exciting volume makes a critical intervention in the processes of historical silencing and upsets conventional understandings of historical scholarship. The book reminds us that refugees have not been afforded the right to write history; this is a powerful, poignant, rightfully challenged assertion, and this assertion is timely - if not now, when?”
New Release - Monograph
Professor Schenck’s new open access monograph has just been published in Palgrave Macmillan’s Transnational History Series . Titled Remembering African Labor Migration to the Second World: Socialist Mobilities between Angola, Mozambique, and East Germany it draws on more than 260 life history interviews and uncovers complex and contradictory experiences and transnational encounters. What emerges is a series of dualities that exist side by side in the memories of the former labor migrants from Angola and Mozambique: the state and the individual, work and consumption, integration and exclusion, loss and gain, and the past in the past and the past in the present and future. By uncovering these dualities, the book explores the lives of African migrants moving between the Third and Second worlds. Check out the book’s website and download it for free! Stay tuned for the Portuguese translation coming out with Imprensa de Ciências Sociais in 2023.
Professor Marcia Schenck and the team of the Professorship of Global History spent the days between August 24th and 26th in the hills of Blankenburg for a writing retreat. Between individual working sessions and collective feedback meetings, the team's members could also enjoy hiking in the surrounding forest or work in the gardens of the Michaelstein Abbey for inspiration.
Prestigious fellowship award to Potsdam Historian Prof. Marcia Schenck from the Historische Kolleg in Munich
Faculty Prize of the Faculty of Arts
Professor Marcia C. Schenck received the faculty award for excellent teaching from the Faculty of Arts and Humanities 2020/21 based on student evaluations.
Interested in the history of refuge seeking in Africa? Check out the recent blog series on Histories of Refuge on Africa is a Country. This series is edited by Madina Thiam and includes contributions by Christoph Kalter, Lazlo Passemiers, Rose Jaji, Keren Weitzberg, Alfred Tembo, Jochen Lingelbach, Aderito Machava, Njung George, Anita Vukovic. Professor Schenck’s contribution on Africa’s forgotten refugee convention is already published. This initiative is a result of the Exploratory Workshop “Rethinking Refuge: Processes of Refuge Seeking”, which Prof. Schenck organized at the Forum for Transregional Studies in Berlin in June 2019.
Professor Schenck has initiated the creation of an H-Africa “Refugees in African History” , a cross-network project which links H-Africa with H-Migration, dedicated to the historical perspective on refuge seeking in Africa as well as to and from the African continent. Together with her team of editors, Keren Weitzberg (H-Africa), Jochen Lingelbach (H-Migration) and Johanna Wetzel, Prof. Schenck maintains the network, which serves as a space to bring together information concerning research, teaching and discussions on refugees in African history. Are you looking to share a conference call or a call for papers? Would you like to ask colleagues for fieldwork tips? Are you preparing a new course and would like to get inspired by different syllabi? We invite you to take a look at our resources and help us expand them further by sending your input to africanrefugees@mail.h-net.org
Courses on offer during the summer semester 2022
The professorship for Global History will offer a new course during the summer semester 2022 “Refugee integration? Critical reflections on history and the present," bringing together students based at five European partner universities within the framework of the European Digital UniverCity partnership. This intensive course delves into the global history of processes of refuge-seeking: it explores the many challenges that refugees and migrants face and the opportunities they create in receiving countries. Its aim is to provide students with the theoretical and conceptual language to make sense of historical processes of refuge-seeking and integration as well as enabling a lively exchange between student perspectives and practitioners’ insights on processes of integration in the city of Potsdam.
Got interested? Find all details on our website: https://bit.ly/3InFQdT
All courses of the summer semester can be found here.
Final open lecutre: Cultural Heritage and Identities in the Middle East
The last event of the seminar "Cultural Heritage and Identities in the Middle East" will take place on 27.07.2022 at 6 pm. All interested parties are cordially invited!
The focus of the event will be Prof. Dr. Lorenzo Verderame's guest lecture on "Sumerian identity in the contemporary era".
You can register here.
For further questions, please contact Dr. Ahmed Kzzo (kzzo@uni-potsdam.de).
The professorship for Global History will offer a new course during the summer semester 2022 “Refugee integration? Critical reflections on history and the present," bringing together students based at five European partner universities within the framework of the European Digital UniverCity partnership. This intensive course delves into the global history of processes of refuge-seeking: it explores the many challenges that refugees and migrants face and the opportunities they create in receiving countries. Its aim is to provide students with the theoretical and conceptual language to make sense of historical processes of refuge-seeking and integration as well as enabling a lively exchange between student perspectives and practitioners’ insights on processes of integration in the city of Potsdam.
Got interested? Find all details on our website: https://bit.ly/3InFQdT
One of this year's three E-Learning UP awards for "Social Online Teaching at the University of Potsdam" went to Professor Marcia C. Schenck for the Global History Dialogues project. We gratulate her warmly on this success!
We’re excited to host this year’s History Dialogues Student Conference on September 15th . The participants of the Global History Lab's History Dialogues Project will be sharing their fascinating research on topics ranging from Roma identity in Yugoslavia and the impacts of Covid-19 on the educational sector in Uganda, to the Golden Age of Vietnamese Music.
You can find the full conference programme here. Zoom links will be circulated to the programme a day prior to registered attendees. You can register here.
We look forward to welcoming you at the conference!
Prof. Marcia Schenck brings students from across the globe together in the History Dialogues Project (HDP). The project lets students write their own historical micro-narratives – after taking a quick “ride” through world history and an introduction to the methods of oral history. For Marcia Schenck, this is not a contradiction, but rather a contribution to the further development of historical science.
On 04/24/2021, the Professor of Global History at the University of Potsdam and the Professor of Modern Europe at the State University of New York in Potsdam, New York State, USA invite you to an exchange between US and German history students. The meeting will take place from 4.00-6.00 pm via Zoom. If interested, please register by 04/22/21 via email to heinze2uuni-potsdampde.
Professor Schenck has initiated the creation of an H-Africa “Refugees in African History” , a cross-network project which links H-Africa with H-Migration, dedicated to the historical perspective on refuge seeking in Africa. You can find a brief interview with her about the genesis of the project here.
Marcia C. Schenck has published an article on Mozambican school children in East Germany titled "Small Strangers at the School of Friendship: Memories of Mozambican School Students of the German Democratic Republic" in the latest issue of the GHI Bulletin on Histories of Migrant Knowledge: Transatlantic and Global Perspectives.
On March 11, 2020, Professor Marcia C. Schenck will present the Global History Lab and the History Dialogues Project at the 49th dghd Annual Conference on Hoschschullehre als Gemeinschaftsaufgabe [Teaching at University as a Community Endeavour]) at Freie Universität Berlin.
On January 21, 2020, Professor Marcia C. Schenck will give a public lecture at the Haus der Brandenburgisch-Preußischen Geschichte, the home of Brandenburg-Prussian history, with the title "Immigration from the 'socialist brother countries' - memories of Angolan and Mozambican migrants in the GDR".
On 24 January 2020 Professor Marcia C. Schenck will give a lecture in Stockholm on "Oral History and Biography: An Exploration of the Memories and Life Histories of Angolan and Mozambican Migrants to the German Democratic Republic" as part of the international workshop of the Global Labor History Network: Methods for Global Labour History.