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... —…
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…
NGHM reads | Eric J. Hobsbawm: The Age of Extremes (1994)
Can a century that one has lived through oneself be captured by the means of historiography, and if so, at what price? Eric J. Hobsbawm's The Age of Extremes. The Short Twentieth Century, 1914–1991, the tenth title on the NGHM reading list from the…
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…
NGHM-Tracker (7/26)
The monthly newsletter of the Working Group on Contemporary History and Historical Migration Research at the University of Osnabrück. By Eduard Usov & Jessica Wehner. June brought a remarkable thematic density: displacement, memory, and the question…
›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…
Announcement: Tiny Desk Colloquium on 2 July 2026: Current Research in the History of Migration
On 2 July 2026, the sixth 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 theses, and our guests will have the chance to present and…
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…