OUT NOW | The Holocaust and Varieties of Migration
Migration was not only a consequence of Holocaust-era violence — it helped organize and execute it. This Open Access volume reframes both Holocaust and migration history through a revealing new lens. Read more at the link below. — Translated from…
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 #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…
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…
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…
Notes from the DHIP-Summer University in Paris | Doing Migration History with Digital Methods.
This essay presents a shortened, reworked version of the keynote lecture given at the summer university 'Doing Migration History with Digital Methods', held at the German Historical Institute Paris (DHIP / Institut historique allemand) and organized by…
›Production Site‹ | The First Episodes of the SFB 1604 Podcast Are Online
Czarina Wilpert, Gerhard Kromschröder, and the question of who studies migration, who describes it, and who is heard. The first episodes of ›Production Site‹ are online, and with them, the podcast of the Collaborative Research Center 1604 ›Production of…
NGHM reads | Carlo Ginzburg: The Cheese and the Worms (1976)
What can we learn from the words of a Friulian miller about the world of the late sixteenth century, and why from his words in particular? Carlo Ginzburg's The Cheese and the Worms, the next title on the NGHM reading list, is one of the classic texts of…
›Twice Displaced‹: Queer ›Displacement‹ in Post-War Europe, Lecture of 4 June
4th Alfred Landecker Lecture with Samantha K. Knapton (University of Nottingham) When Pierre Seel, having returned to Alsace in 1945 after the camp and the Wehrmacht, wrote decades later about his liberation, he articulated a sobering finding: the true…
Announcement: Tiny Desk Colloquium on 29 January 2026: The Holocaust and its Consequences – Regional and International Perspectives
On January 29, 2026, the fifth edition of the NGHM Tiny Desk Colloquium will take place. Once again, young historians from the University of Osnabrück will have the opportunity to present outstanding thesis papers, and our guests will have the chance to…
Inside.NGHM | Eduard Usov
With the series Inside.NGHM, we regularly provide insights into research and teaching at the Chair of Contemporary History and Historical Migration Research at the University of Osnabrück, but above all we introduce the scholars who work behind the…
Research Revisited: NGHM Publications on the Production of Figures of Migration 2024/25
In the section Research Revisited, the NGHM team presents completed research projects and publications in an irregular series. This issue provides insights into four internationally published journal articles from the academic year 2024/25: Transatlantic…
Inside.NGHM | Annika Heyen
With the new series Inside.NGHM, we regularly provide insights into research and teaching at the Chair for Contemporary History and Historical Migration Research at the University of Osnabrück, but above all we introduce the scholars who work behind the…
History @ SFB 1604 | Interview with Gerhard Kromschröder for the “Production of Migration” podcast.
On 21 October 1985, "Ganz unten" by Günther Wallraff was published. Almost exactly three years earlier, on 14 October 1982, another undercover report in "Stern" had already drawn attention to the everyday racism experienced by migrants from Turkey in…
International Workshop on Agency and Forced Migration at the University of Southern Denmark
On September 25 and 26, Prof. Dr. Christoph Rass, Dr. Sebastian Huhn, Annika Heyen, and Jessica Wehner participated in the international workshop on Forced Migration and Agency at Southern University in Denmark, which was organized by Morten Baarvig…
History@SFB: DOMiD Workshop with Students of History and IMIB
On 27 June, the first test workshop of the SFB 1604 transfer project "Reflexive Migration Research in the Museum" took place. For this purpose, the project staff members Aladin El-Mafaalani, Lale Yildirim, Annika Heyen, Johannes Pufahl and Tim Ott,…
History@SFB: Projects A3, A5 and T with the DH Team of the University Library as Guests at the German National Library in Frankfurt am Main
From July 10th to 11th, the team from the Chair of Contemporary History and Historical Migration Research and the Collaborative Research Centre 1604 "Production of Migration" were guests at the German National Library, together with colleagues from…