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German Historical Institute London - Deutsches Historisches Institut London

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German Historical Institute London - Deutsches Historisches Institut London

The GHIL is an academically independent institution and part of the Max Weber Foundation.

04/09/2026

How did imperial debates about South Africa contribute to a growing public alienation between Britain and Germany between 1894 and 1907?

Former GHIL scholarship holder Antonios Chiotellis’s (Freie Universität Berlin) PhD research challenges event-driven explanations of the growing distance between Britain and Germany prior to the First World War. The Kruger Telegram crisis and the South African War were important not only as diplomatic events, but also because they were part of wider debates about empire, security, prosperity, and global influence.

In both countries, newspapers, political organisations and public campaigns helped transform imperial concerns into mass political issues. The result was metropolitan estrangement alongside colonial cooperation, showing that it was public discourse and imperial anxieties rather than direct confrontation alone that shaped the relationship between the two empires.

Read the full blog post: https://ghil.hypotheses.org/8695

Scholarship applications for the period from January 2027 close on 30 September!

🖼 The Rhodes Colossus: Caricature of Cecil John Rhodes, after he announced plans for a telegraph line and railroad from Cape Town to Cairo. Punch, 10 December 1892.

02/09/2026

📚 We're back with our regular Featured Books from the GHIL Library!

For our first book display since the reopening of the GHIL, we thought we would go back to basics in the best way, showcasing a topic at the core of our institutional mission: British–German Relations 🇬🇧🇩🇪

Great Britain and Germany are close geographical neighbours, separated only by a narrow sea channel. So how have these neighbours lived alongside one another over the centuries? It is a complicated history of wars and invasions, competition and rivalry, but also one of cultural exchange, royal dynastic entanglements, and economic cooperation.

You can see all these books in our Common Room. There is also a whole section on British-German relations in the Octagon room next door: look for classmark L. There, you can explore histories of the Hanse, of Germans emigrating to Britain for a variety of reasons, and of the many social, cultural, and economic connections between the two countries.

Swipe through to see some of the titles on display or find out more in our catalogue:

https://library.ghil.ac.uk/cgi-bin/koha/opac-shelves.pl?op=view&shelfnumber=144

28/08/2026

Wishing everyone in the UK a relaxing summer bank holiday weekend! 🌞

The GHIL and our library will be closed on Monday, 31 August (Summer Bank Holiday) and will reopen on Tuesday, 1 September. 📅

Normal opening hours resume next week – see you then!

25/08/2026

New on the GHIL Podcast! 🎧

The twentieth century is normally considered the century of the refugee, beginning with the mass flight and expulsion of civilian populations in the First World War, and reaching its sad climax with millions of displaced people in the Second World War and its immediate aftermath. In the German discourse, however, the refugee appears as a socially relevant figure only from the beginning of the 1970s onwards, when an increasing number of refugees from non-European territories came to Europe.

Isabella Löhr's (Freie Universität Berlin) lecture explores this phenomenon by looking at how decolonization and the transformation of human rights policies and international migration regimes from the 1950s contributed to new perceptions of forced migration in European societies.

Tune in now: https://www.ghil.ac.uk/publications/podcasts/the-birth-of-the-refugee-figure-in-the-1970s

20/08/2026

Call for Papers! 📣

The Society for Reformation History and the GHI London invite scholars from all fields of academic research to participate in a conference on 'Reformation and Participation' that will take place in London from the 30th September to the 2nd October 2027. 📅

The conference seeks contributions that address, for the period from the late C.15th to the mid C.17th, questions such as: In what legal and political contexts did the term or concept of "participation" emerge, and how was it deployed? Did it function merely as a descriptive category, or did it carry ideological implications? In what spheres of religious, cultural, political, and economic life did participation assume practical significance? What participatory practices can we identify? And how did the Reformation, with its diverse dynamics, affect contemporary understandings of participation? ⛪

Submit your proposal (in German or English) by 15 September 2026.

For more information: https://www.ghil.ac.uk/events/conferences-and-workshops/reformation-and-participation

🖼 Reinhold Möller, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

17/08/2026

Happy publication day to Juliane Clegg (Universität Stuttgart)! 🎉

Geprägte Freiheit: Großbritannien und das Europäische Währungssystem 1979–1992 is out now in our series Publications of the German Historical Institute London (De Gruyter Brill)! 📕

Is Great Britain part of Europe? In the 1980s, this question was negotiated during the debate about whether to participate in the European Monetary System, the predecessor to the Monetary Union. The pound became an object of political and economic conflict as a symbol of national identity, sovereignty, and economic realignment. Juliane Clegg's study offers new perspectives on Britain’s European policy and current debates about autonomy and cooperation. 🪙💷

For more information: https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/isbn/9783112234877/html?srsltid=AfmBOopAsIdzW6yeU5JbGwU2RRYFJ3jdB9VILwblc6JAA1xTRR9Hw84f

13/08/2026

Applications are open for our Joint Fellowship in cooperation with the Max Weber Forum for South Asian Studies on “The British Empire and the History of Colonialism”! 📢

We invite invitations by early career scholars whose research is situated in the broad field of the British Empire and the History of Colonialism.

The fellowship is open to post-doctoral/early career scholars from universities and other academic research institutions in Germany who wish to spend time in the UK and India for any of the following purposes:

▪Preparing for a research project
▪Archival visits
▪Networking with scholars in India and the UK
▪Writing an article or a part of a book

The fellowship will be awarded for a total of 3 months and can be taken up at any time during the calendar year 2027.

Apply by 25 September! More information: https://www.ghil.ac.uk/opportunities/scholarships

🖼 By William Daniell - Book, Chronicles of Blackwall Yard by Robert Wigram and Henry Green 1881. available online athttps://archive.org/details/chroniclesofblac00gree, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=19310960

11/08/2026

How can humans and non-human beings live alongside each other, and how should land and resources be distributed?

In her new blog post, GHIL Fellow Mirjam Hähnle introduces her research project, Life in the Grid: Urban Nature in City Utopias, c. 1600–1750. The project examines how literary and built utopias from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries imagined alternative forms of collective life, and how animals, plants, minerals, buildings and infrastructures formed part of these visions. 🌿🤝🗺

Read the full blog post now: https://ghil.hypotheses.org/8641

07/08/2026

Last month, we had the pleasure of hosting a workshop on 'Transformations and Contestations from the Global South: Rethinking Livestock Frontiers' organised by Soheb Niazi (Freie Universität Berlin) and Vishal Singh Deo (Manipal Academy of Higher Education)!

Tracing the expansion and transformation of frontiers and global networks related to the trade of commodities, papers explored life histories of social actors, the production and negotiation of infrastructural spaces, the impact of technological innovations on skills, labour, and markets, as well as strategies of resistance and subversion.

Thank you to all the participants and the organisers!

The workshop was organised with support from the Gerda Henkel Stiftung and the MWF Delhi.

04/08/2026

Now available in Open Access 🔓

Poverty in Modern Europe: Spaces, Localities, Institutions edited by Andreas Gestrich, Elisabeth Grüner, and Susanne Hahn

Poverty in Modern Europe explores the spatial dimensions of poverty in nineteenth and twentieth-century Europe. Its essays focus on a variety of regional, local, and institutional settings and apply different approaches and methods, such as micro history, historical geography, network analysis, and the study of political and academic expert discourses. 📕

Read it now: https://perspectivia.net/receive/pnet_mods_00007651

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Opening Hours

Monday	10am - 5pm
Tuesday	10am - 5pm
Wednesday	10am - 5pm
Thursday	10am - 8pm
Friday	10am - 5pm

Telephone

+442073092050

Website

https://www.ghil.ac.uk/

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