German Historical Institute London - Deutsches Historisches Institut London

German Historical Institute London - Deutsches Historisches Institut London The GHIL is an academically independent institution and part of the Max Weber Foundation.

Join us next Wednesday, 10 June, for a lecture in cooperation with the Earlier Middle Ages Seminar, Institute of Histori...
05/06/2026

Join us next Wednesday, 10 June, for a lecture in cooperation with the Earlier Middle Ages Seminar, Institute of Historical Research, given by Gerda Heydemann (Freie Universität Berlin) on 'The Social Life of Carolingian Exegesis'!

The study of Carolingian exegesis has become a remarkably dynamic field in recent years. The pre-eminent role of the Bible and its interpretation in Carolingian political discourse has been much emphasized, as has the impact of biblical models on conceptions of history. This lecture will highlight a different aspect of the ‘social life’ of biblical exegesis in this period, namely its impact on the legal culture of the Carolingian period.

As Gerda Heydemann will attempt to show through selected examples, analysing the interplay between legal and exegetical thought offers a way to better understand not only the role of the Bible in a legal world characterized by a multiplicity of norms, but also the social functions of Carolingian exegesis.

Sign up now to join us in person or online: https://www.ghil.ac.uk/events/lectures

to last Friday! Thanks for a wonderful workshop on medieval Germany! 🏰It was inspiring to get insights into so many di...
04/06/2026

to last Friday! Thanks for a wonderful workshop on medieval Germany! 🏰

It was inspiring to get insights into so many different projects — from nuns' letters and Hildegard of Bingen to accounting records and the artistic world of Nuremberg. We were delighted to welcome participants and guests from across the UK, Germany and beyond.

A special thanks to everyone who presented, and especially to our senior commentators Henrike Lähnemann (Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages, University of Oxford) and Christian Jaser (Universität Kassel) for their thoughtful contributions throughout the day.

As one participant put it: "It was great to present somewhere outside my own uni and to see what people at other places are working on — I very much enjoyed meeting new people and following the discussions in a very collegiate atmosphere."

Join us on Wednesday, 3 June, at 5:30pm at the GHIL for a special lecture by Robbie Duschinsky (University of Cambridge)...
01/06/2026

Join us on Wednesday, 3 June, at 5:30pm at the GHIL for a special lecture by Robbie Duschinsky (University of Cambridge) on 'The Legacy and Loose Ends of "the Queen of Attachment Research": The Work of Mary Main and Its Transnational Reception'. 🫂

Robbie Duschinsky is Professor of Social Science and Health and Head of the Applied Social Science Group within the Primary Care Unit. He is also Director of Studies in Sociology at Sidney Sussex College. Robbie is co-PI of the “Living Assessments” Collaborator Award, funded by Wellcome, exploring the integration of health and social care in assessments of children. He is also co-PI of the “COACHES” study, funded by the NIHR and What Works for Early Intervention and Children’s Social Care, examining mental health referrals and treatment for young people with social care involvement.

Sign up now: https://www.ghil.ac.uk/events/lectures

New on the GHIL Blog: Ruins and Visions of Empire: Famagusta and the Quest for Revival in the Late Nineteenth CenturyWri...
28/05/2026

New on the GHIL Blog:

Ruins and Visions of Empire: Famagusta and the Quest for Revival in the Late Nineteenth Century

Written by former GHIL scholarship holder Okcan Yıldırımtürk (Freie Universität Berlin), the post draws on his PhD research exploring Famagusta in the nineteenth century. It examines competing proposals to regenerate the historically marginalised port town, and traces how Ottoman, French, and British imperial projects interacted with local initiatives as the city’s ruins became a palimpsest for trans-imperial and trans-communal visions of maritime revival.

Read the full post here: https://ghil.hypotheses.org/7917

Join us on 9 June at 5:30pm (BST) for the next lecture in our summer series on environmental history! 📅Maximilian Schuh ...
26/05/2026

Join us on 9 June at 5:30pm (BST) for the next lecture in our summer series on environmental history! 📅

Maximilian Schuh (Freie Universität Berlin) will talk about 'Demesne Accounts, Court Rolls, and Prognostic Treatises: Weather and Its Perceptions in Fourteenth-Century England'.

His lecture examines how changing weather conditions in fourteenth-century England were perceived and interpreted by contemporaries. While the consequences of environmental change in the later Middle Ages have long remained underexplored, the focus here is on how weather was observed, recorded, and made meaningful. 🌦️

Drawing on a wide range of sources—from demesne accounts and court rolls to learned prognostic treatises—the lecture considers both the presence and absence of references to weather phenomena. Particular attention is paid to the communicative contexts in which such observations were documented. By situating perceptions of weather within their political, social, and economic frameworks, the lecture offers a historically grounded perspective on how societies respond to environmental change. 📜

Sign up now to sign up to attend in person or on Zoom: https://www.ghil.ac.uk/events/lectures



📷 Courtesy British Library, Add. 42130, f. 170 [cropped].

Join us next week on 28 May at 5:30pm for the English Goethe Society's Ida Herz Lecture given by Susan Bernofsky (Colum...
20/05/2026

Join us next week on 28 May at 5:30pm for the English Goethe Society's Ida Herz Lecture given by Susan Bernofsky (Columbia University) entitled 'On Magicking a Mountain: World-Making in Literary Translation'. 📅

Susan Bernofsky is Professor of Writing in the Faculty of Arts at Columbia University. She is the author of Clairvoyant of the Small: The Life of Robert Walser (Yale, 2021), and has translated more than twenty books including three novels and four collections of short prose by the Swiss-German author Robert Walser, Kafka’s The Metamorphosis and Hesse’s Siddhartha. Her translation of Jenny Erpenbeck’s novel The End of Days (2014) won the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, the Schlegel-Tieck Translation Prize, the Ungar Award for Literary Translation, and the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize. She is currently working on a new translation of Thomas Mann’s monumental novel The Magic Mountain for W.W. Norton.

This lecture will take place as a hybrid event at the German Historical Institute London and online via Zoom. Sign up here: https://www.ghil.ac.uk/events/lectures



🎨 Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Join us on 26 May at 5:30pm for the second lecture in our summer series on environmental history! Etienne Benson (Max Pl...
15/05/2026

Join us on 26 May at 5:30pm for the second lecture in our summer series on environmental history!

Etienne Benson (Max Planck Institute for the History of Science) will talk about 'Organizing Knowledge for Planetary Development: The International Hydrological Decade (1965–1974) and the Geopolitics of the Earth Sciences'. 💧

Over the course of the twentieth century, various branches of the Earth sciences—including geology, meteorology, oceanography, and hydrology—adopted methods, models, and styles of work borrowed from physics. The rise of geophysical approaches in the Earth sciences coincided with what some historians call the Great Acceleration, a period when human impacts on planetary systems increased exponentially. These two developments were mutually reinforcing, with new forms of knowledge facilitating new forms of resource exploitation and vice versa.

This lecture describes this process through the example of UNESCO’s International Hydrological Decade (1965–1974), with particular attention to the role of Cold War conflict and North–South tensions in shaping the agenda of hydrology as an Earth science in service of development on a planetary scale.

Sign up now to join us in person or via Zoom: https://www.ghil.ac.uk/events/lectures 🔗



📷 Public domain / US Government product

New GHIL Podcast episode! 🎧Host Kim König speaks with Benno Gammerl (European University Institute) about the research u...
14/05/2026

New GHIL Podcast episode! 🎧

Host Kim König speaks with Benno Gammerl (European University Institute) about the research underlying his lecture on “Queering German history: Still a vital and viable endeavor?”. 🏳️‍🌈

They explore what it means to “q***r” history, both as a critical practice and as a methodological approach for rethinking established historical narratives. Benno Gammerl discusses why q***ring remains a vital tool for understanding German history and reflects on its implications for historiography more generally. They also consider how this perspective can offer valuable insights to scholars whose work may not explicitly engage with q***r history.

Don't miss Benno Gammerl's accompanying GHIL Lecture on “Queering German History: Still a Vital and Viable Endeavour?”

Tune in here: https://www.ghil.ac.uk/publications/podcasts/q***r-perspectives

***rhistory ***ring

Join us next Tuesday, 19 May, at 5:30pm for the first lecture in our summer series given by John Morgan (University of B...
12/05/2026

Join us next Tuesday, 19 May, at 5:30pm for the first lecture in our summer series given by John Morgan (University of Bristol) on "The Politics of Flooding in Early Modern England". 📅

Focusing on both catastrophic flood events—such as those of 1570 in eastern England and 1607 in the south-west—and the more routine experience of living with recurrent flooding, the talk examines how communities engaged with and adapted to these environmental challenges. It also considers how changing economic, legal, and constitutional contexts made flood management an increasingly political issue. 🌊

Sign up now to join us in person or online: https://www.ghil.ac.uk/events/lectures



📷 Cropped image from the title page of an 1884 reprint of "A true report of certaine wonderfull ouerflowings of Waters, now lately in Summerset-shire, Norfolke and other places of England...", originally printed in London 1607.

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