German Historical Institute London Podcast

public_relations@ghil.ac.uk · ghil.ac.uk

Welcome to the podcast of the German Historical Institute London, a research centre for German and British academics and students in the heart of Bloomsbury. The GHIL is a research base for historians of all eras working on colonial history and global relations or the history of Great Britain and Ireland, and also provides a meeting point for UK historians whose research concerns the history of the German-speaking lands. In each podcast episode, ranging from interviews to lecture recordings, we take a look at historical research from different periods and areas. Subscribe to our podcast and visit our website at www.ghil.ac.uk to learn more about our research and work at the GHIL.

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Episodes 129

Autosuggestion: On The Early History of Advertising Psychology
16d ago · 50:00
In 1900, psychologist Harlow Stearns Gale published what is probably the earliest psychological study of advertising. His main interest was the process of convincing potential buyers by attracting their attention, suggesting a need and a product to satisfy it, and making its brand memorable. In this lecture, I will trace the historical background that made it seem necessary to stimulate consumption through new forms of advertising and thus motivated the psychotechnical modelling of consumer behaviour. I argue that to awaken and stabilize needs against the background of mass production and dist
Sigrid Schultz, the Chicago Tribune, and the Third Reich
16d ago · 37:00
For journalist William Shirer, ‘no other correspondent in Germany knew so much of what was going on behind the scenes as did Sigrid Schultz.’ Hermann Göring denounced Schultz as ‘that dragon lady from Chicago.’ Sigrid Schultz lived in Berlin from 1914 to 1941, was bureau chief for the Chicago Tribune from 1925, and had a formidable record of journalistic accomplishment. Yet Schultz has left only a faint historical trace. Schultz overcame significant obstacles—as a woman in a male dominated milieu, as a foreign journalist working in a totalitarian state, and as an interventionist at an isolatio
The Birth of the Refugee Figure in the 1970s
16d ago · 49:00
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. The lecture will explore this phenomenon by looking at how decolonization and the transformation of human
Epistemic Inequalities, the ILO, and Labour History in the Global South
2mo ago · 18:00
In this episode, Kim König and Thomas Kaal sit down with Ulrike Lindner, Professor of Modern History at the University of Cologne, to talk about the research behind her lecture on epistemic inequalities in the Global South and their role in reproducing social hierarchies. Drawing on archival work on the International Labour Organization and its discussions of so‑called “native labour” in the 1920s, they explore how she traces the exclusion of Black experts, the authority granted to European imperial insiders, and the ways these knowledge practices shaped ILO policies on colonial and forced lab
Epistemic Inequalities and their Consequences: The International Labour Organization and its Treatment of Colonial Workers after 1919
2mo ago · 51:00
The lecture will first address the significance of epistemic inequalities in the Global South and work out why these are often prerequisites for the persistence of durable social inequalities. It will then analyse the International Labour Organization (ILO) and its treatment of colonial, non-white workers in the 1920s as an example of the consequences of epistemic inequalities. The ILO, founded in 1919, deliberately excluded black experts from its discussions of ‘native labour’, relying instead on European experts with long imperial careers. These experts were generally influenced by racist pr
Queering German History: Still a Vital and Viable Endeavour?
3mo ago · 46:00
What difference can queer perspectives make in our understanding of the German past and in present-day conversations around sexual and gender diversity? Having taught and published on LGBT history for several years in Berlin, London, and other places, Benno Gammerl takes this opportunity to reflect on the impact of such work. Looking at experiences and struggles of same-sex loving and gender-nonconforming people in Germany since around 1900, the talk discusses whether we should continue doing queer history in spite of the criticism that it essentializes sexual identity categories, and against
Queer Perspectives: New Ways of Understanding German History
3mo ago · 19:00
In this episode, host Kim König speaks with Benno Gammerl (European University Institute in Florence) about the research underlying his lecture on “Queering German history: Still a vital and viable endeavor?”. They explore what it means to “queer” history, both as a critical practice and as a methodological approach for rethinking established historical narratives. Benno Gammerl discusses why queering 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 sc
Decolonising the Natural History Collections of Empire
5mo ago · 49:00
This lecture, with a focus on India, aims to understand this important archive of knowledge of the natural world collected and organised in the context of the empire in the light of recent historiography on botany and empire. It highlights the importance of creating an inventory and digitally repatriating botanical specimens held primarily in British institutions, and highlights efforts for cultural remediation. The lecture examines neglected literature and networks in the imperial scientific network, which were crucial to what was a prodigious scientific renaissance in natural history and env
A linguistic legacy: The lasting impact of Reformation-era texts
7mo ago · 21:00
In this episode, GHIL Fellow for Medieval History Thomas Kaal and host Kim König talk with Henrike Lähnemann, Professor of Medieval German Literature and Linguistics at the University of Oxford, about her recent GHIL lecture. They explore how Latin and German texts from around 500 years ago shaped the development of the German language and its cultural history, with examples ranging from nuns’ letters to Reformation pamphlets and songs, a brief musical interlude included.
1525 and All That: How Nuns’ Letters and Reformation Pamphlets Shaped German History
9mo ago · 50:00
The lecture will discuss how Latin and German texts written 500 years ago influenced the linguistic and historical development of early modern and modern Germany, looking at examples from nuns’ letters, Reformation pamphlets, and songs. This is part of a project to write a cultural history of Germany by developing a historical narrative which combines linguistic changes with political, social, and cultural topics, arguing that early 16th-century texts and agendas still have an impact today.
Local Modernity: Agency, Entanglement, and the Making of the Modern Middle East
10mo ago · 58:00
Current critical scholarship tends to cast the colonial West as the prime actor in shaping the non-Western world, ‘producing’ types of knowledge specific to itself and alien to others, ‘inventing’ not just tradition(s) but entire religions, and imposing boundaries premised on colonial knowledge and interest. The insight gained from this scholarship is deeply important. But it also carries the risk of overrating the power of imperial world-making. In large parts of the non-Western world, the formation of modern subjectivity and statehood drew on concepts, practices, and institutions that predat
What is a fever?: Examining illness, 1770-1830
11mo ago · 18:00
Chills, aches and hot flushes. What exactly were people describing when they complained of fever around 1800? In this episode, host Kim König and GHIL Research Fellow Pascale Siegrist talk to Stefanie Gänger, Professor of Modern History at Heidelberg University. They discuss the research behind her lecture on the history of fever and febrile diseases in the French, Iberian and British Empires from the 1770s to the 1820s, a period during which these diseases were widely considered to be the world's most common and fatal.
‘The Most Common and Fatal of All Diseases’: Histories of Fever, 1770-1830
11mo ago · 47:00
The talk is concerned with the history of fever and febrile diseases in the French, Iberian, and British empires, from the 1770s to the 1820s, a time when these were widely considered the most common and fatal diseases afflicting mankind. Emphasizing the historicity and cultural contingency of fever and the febrile experience, the presentation explores the concept of disease in the period in question, this ailment’s unusual prevalence at the time, sufferers’ sensory experience of it, and the commonness of ‘sequelae’, that is, of fevers which left sufferers with longer-term damage to their heal
Urban issues: Social problems in late 20th-century European cities
1y ago · 30:00
In this episode, host Kim König and Research Fellow Ole Münch are joined by Christiane Reinecke, Professor of Modern European History at the Europa-Universität Flensburg, to discuss her research on notions of urban problems in late 20th-century European cities. Drawing on Christiane’s GHIL lecture, they discuss the shift in urban policy discourse from class-based concerns to issues of migration, race and ethnicity, and explore the role of social science in shaping these developments. Our conversation covers comparative European approaches to diversity and integration, from Germany and France t
Picturing working class communities
1y ago · 25:00
In this episode, we talk about working-class communities. Or rather: ideas about the working-class, some of which are quite romanticised. Joining host Kim König and Research Fellow Ole Münch to discuss the topic of his GHIL lecture is Jon Lawrence, Emeritus Professor of Modern British History at the University of Exeter. Together, they explore how these ideas have influenced scholarly discourse and political imagination in post-war Britain, as well as the tension between lived experience and intellectual frameworks when it comes to understanding working-class life. Drawing on field notes from
Sociology and the Urban Experience: Double lecture
1y ago · 55:00
Jon Lawrence: Shifting Visions of Working-Class Community in Post-War Britain The idea that the British working class had its own distinctive way of life and culture can be traced back to at least the 1880s, but in the wake of the Second World War it became common to argue that urban working-class life was marked by dense networks of reciprocal social relationships and shared norms worthy of the term ‘community’. Out of this came Michael Young’s influential engagement with working-class culture and ‘community’ in the early 1950s, especially Family and Kinship in East London (1957), which becam
Mind the void: The importance of empty spaces in early modern Europe
1y ago · 25:00
In this episode, host Kim König is joined by Ole Münch, Research Fellow for Modern History, and Achim Landwehr, Professor of Early Modern History at the University of Konstanz. Together, they discuss the research behind Achim Landwehr's GHIL Lecture, which examined the constitutive role of voids in European early modernity. Their conversation moves from information-rich early modern calendars to the significance of gaps in our past, exploring how these influence the way we teach and write about history.
The Hole Story: Voids and their Constitutive Role in European (Early) Modernity
1y ago · 46:00
European cultures tend to overlook voids, or, at best, see them as unpleasant phenomena. Yet voids are not only unavoidable, but actually constitutive in the emergence of European-Western modernity over the last four hundred years—which might now be coming to an end, possibly due to the excessive production of voids. Although the meaning of emptiness was certainly not first conceived in the seventeenth century, empty spaces took on a new role in this early modern period. There were of course the well-known vacuum experiments, but other voids were gaining in importance too: white spots in carto
London – Images as Evidence | Bilder als Beweise
1y ago · 1:07:00
The exhibition “The Horror Camps”, displayed in the Reading Room of the Daily Express in London from May 1945, featured enlarged photographs from the liberated Nazi camps. It prompted questions about the relationship between image and evidence, as well as the public use of degrading images, which remain profoundly relevant to this day. Janina Struk (independent scholar), Paul Betts (University of Oxford) and James Bulgin (Imperial War Museums) discuss these questions against the backdrop of changing historical conditions and curatorial practices. The event, in cooperation with the Rethinking M
German racial science and modern anthropology in India
1y ago · 28:00
How do colonial-era racial theories continue to influence modern science in India? Today, we're exploring this question by examining new research which traces the transnational connections between Germany and colonial India in the field of racial science. In this podcast interview, host Kim König is joined by Indra Sengupta, Senior Fellow and Head of our India Research Programme. They speak with Thiago Barbosa, winner of the 2023 GHIL dissertation prize, about his book, 'Racializing Caste: Anthropology Between Germany and India and the Legacy of Irawati Karve (1905–1970)', which has just been
Processing history
1y ago · 14:00
How do we define a process? What types exist, and how does our understanding of them reflect our historical and cultural context? In this interview host Kim König and GHIL/UCL Visiting Postdoctoral Fellow Almuth Ebke (University of Mannheim) talk to Wolfgang Knöbl (Hamburg Institute for Social Research) about the research behind his GHIL lecture on (historical) processes. Their conversation explores these questions while examining the role of storytelling in claims about social processes and why plausible process claims cannot be made without knowledge of narratological arguments.
The Problem with (Historical) Processes: Reflections on an Undertheorized Topic
1y ago · 53:00
Talk of ‘social processes’ is widespread in historiography as well as in the social sciences; process terms such as industrialization, urbanization, individualization, secularization, etc. are ubiquitous. Nevertheless, it is usually rather unclear what processes actually are, how they should be theorized, and what types of processes can be distinguished. The lecture will 1) pose the question of why these process terms came to dominate the social sciences in the first place; 2) attempt to prove the thesis that process claims inevitably entail narrative elements; and 3) conclude that plausible p
The power of protest
1y ago · 21:00
In this episode, host Kim König and Ole Münch, research fellow in modern history, talk to Professor Philipp Gassert, whose lecture at the German Historical Institute explored a compelling question: Why does street protests remain powerful in our digital age? Professor Gassert’s research examines 250 years of protest history in different societies and geographical contexts. His project aims to develop a historical framework for understanding why physically taking to the streets remains an effective form of political expression, even as digital platforms offer new avenues for dissent.
Contesting Political Spaces: Thoughts on a World History of Street Protest
1y ago · 43:00
Even though we now live in an age of digital media, physical street protest is not a thing of the past. Anyone knows that even in the twenty-first century, public, symbolically charged spaces continue to be occupied by protesters who hope to score political points. We may even be under the impression that the frequency of street protests has increased. So why does ‘taking to the streets’ still work, even though we can be so wonderfully outraged online today? The obvious answer is: it can be explained historically. I will take my examples from 250 years of history, covering a wide range of soci
After Colonial Forms of Knowledge and Post-Colonial Technoscience: Revisiting the Historiography of Techniques and Technology
1y ago · 53:00
Dhruv Raina's lecture explores the conceptual challenges of developing a comprehensive historiography of techniques and technology in a global context. The encounter between Europe and Asia in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries produced several discourses on the non-Western/non-European worlds that played a formative role in the crystallization of the social science disciplines. Late twentieth-century scholarship has indicated that there is no purely European discourse on India and its knowledge forms. Nevertheless, despite important differences, there is a family resemblance in the descr

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German Historical Institute London Podcast

Episodes 129

Autosuggestion: On The Early History of Advertising Psychology

Sigrid Schultz, the Chicago Tribune, and the Third Reich

The Birth of the Refugee Figure in the 1970s

Epistemic Inequalities, the ILO, and Labour History in the Global South

Epistemic Inequalities and their Consequences: The International Labour Organization and its Treatment of Colonial Workers after 1919

Queering German History: Still a Vital and Viable Endeavour?

Queer Perspectives: New Ways of Understanding German History

Decolonising the Natural History Collections of Empire

A linguistic legacy: The lasting impact of Reformation-era texts

1525 and All That: How Nuns’ Letters and Reformation Pamphlets Shaped German History

Local Modernity: Agency, Entanglement, and the Making of the Modern Middle East

What is a fever?: Examining illness, 1770-1830

‘The Most Common and Fatal of All Diseases’: Histories of Fever, 1770-1830

Urban issues: Social problems in late 20th-century European cities

Picturing working class communities

Sociology and the Urban Experience: Double lecture

Mind the void: The importance of empty spaces in early modern Europe

The Hole Story: Voids and their Constitutive Role in European (Early) Modernity

London – Images as Evidence | Bilder als Beweise

German racial science and modern anthropology in India

Processing history

The Problem with (Historical) Processes: Reflections on an Undertheorized Topic

The power of protest

Contesting Political Spaces: Thoughts on a World History of Street Protest

After Colonial Forms of Knowledge and Post-Colonial Technoscience: Revisiting the Historiography of Techniques and Technology

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Episodes 129

Autosuggestion: On The Early History of Advertising Psychology

Sigrid Schultz, the Chicago Tribune, and the Third Reich

The Birth of the Refugee Figure in the 1970s

Epistemic Inequalities, the ILO, and Labour History in the Global South

Epistemic Inequalities and their Consequences: The International Labour Organization and its Treatment of Colonial Workers after 1919

Queering German History: Still a Vital and Viable Endeavour?

Queer Perspectives: New Ways of Understanding German History

Decolonising the Natural History Collections of Empire

A linguistic legacy: The lasting impact of Reformation-era texts

1525 and All That: How Nuns’ Letters and Reformation Pamphlets Shaped German History

Local Modernity: Agency, Entanglement, and the Making of the Modern Middle East

What is a fever?: Examining illness, 1770-1830

‘The Most Common and Fatal of All Diseases’: Histories of Fever, 1770-1830

Urban issues: Social problems in late 20th-century European cities

Picturing working class communities

Sociology and the Urban Experience: Double lecture

Mind the void: The importance of empty spaces in early modern Europe

The Hole Story: Voids and their Constitutive Role in European (Early) Modernity

London – Images as Evidence | Bilder als Beweise

German racial science and modern anthropology in India

Processing history

The Problem with (Historical) Processes: Reflections on an Undertheorized Topic

The power of protest

Contesting Political Spaces: Thoughts on a World History of Street Protest

After Colonial Forms of Knowledge and Post-Colonial Technoscience: Revisiting the Historiography of Techniques and Technology