NGHM reads | 14 | Jordan: Theories and Methods of Historical Scholarship (2021)
Stefan Jordan's *Theorien und Methoden der Geschichtswissenschaft* has reached its fifth edition in 2021 — a testament to foundations sturdy enough to absorb twelve years of disciplinary change. NGHM reads it closely. — Translated from…
Keynote | ICDAR 2026 Vienna | History and Document Analysis in Dialogue
On 1 September 2026, I delivered the second keynote at ICDAR 2026, the central conference on machine document analysis, held at TU Wien. This report elaborates the argument of that talk: the recognition of historical handwriting is largely a solved…
Closing Conference: “The ‘Emsland Camps’ as a Conflict Landscape in Transformation” on 24 and 25 September 2026
How do digitally dispersed histories of National Socialist camp sites become legible again? Our closing conference on 24–25 September 2026 presents new research, digital tools, and pedagogical approaches developed around the Emsland Camps ... —…
NGHM reads | 13 | Scott: Gender and the Politics of History (1988)
Joan Wallach Scott's Gender and the Politics of History (1988) asks how historical analysis makes power visible. A text that divided the discipline and received the Joan Kelly Memorial Prize a year later. Title 13 on the NGHM reading list.
Willamette Dispatch #3 | Who Names Whom? Salem, Woodburn, and Portland.
Third week of the archive journey: Salem, Woodburn, Portland. In the Governor's records, the agricultural workers are referred to as "alien workers" — a legal category and a budget line item simultaneously. In Woodburn, it becomes clear why a separate…
Willamette Dispatch #2 | Second Week in the Extension Service Records, Corvallis.
The second week of my journey took me to Corvallis. The Special Collections and Archives Research Center at Oregon State University holds the records of the Extension Service, the agricultural advisory agency responsible for administering the Bracero…
A problem of the present – a conference for the future? The 1943 Bermuda Conference on the “Refugee Problem” re-read from the perspective of a Migration Historian
What happens when a migration historian re-examines the 1943 Bermuda Conference — long studied through a Holocaust studies lens? Annika Heyen's new essay tests how fresh disciplinary perspectives can unlock overlooked dimensions of well-tr... —…
NGHM reads | 12 | Sofsky: Die Ordnung des Terrors (1993)
Sofsky's 1993 sociology of the Nazi concentration camp refuses to treat it as a civilizational rupture — reading it instead as a product of modernity itself. A structural analysis built on survivor testimony that still provokes. — Translated from…
Willamette Dispatch #1 | The Arrival of a Figure. ‘Guest worker’ and ‘bracero’ in the PCUN Records, 1981 to 1997.
In 1981, Senator Alan K. Simpson justifies the choice of terminology by arguing that 'bracero' is offensive; hence the term 'guest worker'. During those same months, a coalition in Oregon maps the new word back onto the old program. First week in the…
History@SFB 1604 | »The Place Changers«: Podcast Recordings at the 180 Grad Wende in Cologne-Kalk.
On 28 July, Christoph Rass and Leonie Stoll recorded in Cologne-Kalk for the SFB podcast "Production Site," together with the association 180 Grad Wende. The episode "Die Place Changer" reverses the usual direction: it is not research that explains…
NGHM-Tracker (8/26)
How do historical categories get made — and what does it mean to read them critically? The July NGHM newsletter traces research across migration history, digital methods, and memory culture, from Paris and Tutzing to rural Georgia in 1943. — Translated…
INSIDE.NGHM | Sebastian Musch
From Jewish Studies in Heidelberg to teaching in Sri Lanka, Sebastian Musch's path to becoming a historian of the Holocaust and migration was anything but straightforward. Read how chance, curiosity, and commitment shaped a remarkable acad... —…
Fundstücke | »Guests of the Reich«. An American Riposte to the Nazi Catchphrase ‘Gastarbeiter’, 1943
A weekly newspaper from rural Georgia, July 23, 1943: Under the headline "Guests of the Reich," a short column dissects the National Socialist propaganda term Gastarbeiter in its English translation and calls it "Hitler tosh." The source predates the…
Team NGHM in Tutzing | Conference “From Geneva to Schengen
From June 29 to July 1, 2026, Jessica Wehner and Annika Heyen attended the international conference "From Geneva to Schengen. Shaping Immigration and Refugee Protection in Western Europe, 1951-1994" at the invitation of Michael Mayer (Akademie für…
NGHM reads | 11 | Frantz Fanon: Black Skin, White Masks (1980)
What does the racializing gaze do to those it falls upon? In "Black Skin, White Masks" (1952), Frantz Fanon interweaves psychiatry, philosophy, and anti-colonial critique – creating a foundational text of Postcolonial Studies. Episode 11 of #NGHMliest
NGHM reads | 10 | Detlev Peukert: Die Weimarer Republik (1987)
Detlev Peukert's 1987 study reframed Weimar not as democracy's failure, but as modernity's self-inflicted crisis. The tenth title on our reading list — and still essential reading. — Translated from nghm.hypotheses.org
Watching a Register Move | An Animated Card Index and the Production of Migration
This essay follows an animated visualization built from Osnabrück’s historic foreigners’ registration index to ask, from the perspective of CRC 1604 ‘Produktion von Migration’, whether a bureaucratic register merely records migration — or helps produce…
Report | Sixth Tiny Desk Colloquium: Displaced Persons, Urban Migration Policy, and the Historiography of the Refugee Regime
The most recent Tiny Desk Colloquium of the Chair of Contemporary History and Historical Migration Research, convened under the direction of Dr. Sebastian Musch, brought together five contributions ranging from West German postwar justice and digital…
