Contemporary historical studies, looking into the past of émigré scholars, favour in principal biography as form. It is thus the biography as concept as well as narrative structure that largely informs the design, in which the life of scholars, most often men and less often women, is depicted and their intellectual development represented.
The objective of the workshop is to go beyond the biographic design. The workshops aims to reach this goal by addressing two inextricably interlinked questions: The first questions is as to how more generally social and cultural dimensions influenced, if not informed, émigré scholarship. The second question concerns the ramifications resulting from such dynamics of emigration: How did emigration affect and influence research and knowledge production in the discipline of history? How did emigration inform and ultimately change the field of historical research as well as institutions of research?
In order to extend our scope and understanding of the history of émigré scholars, both thematically and methodically, the workshop draws on questions and notions that attracted less attention so far, and it deliberately borrows from concepts and observations in the social history of sciences, the history of historiography and the new history of sciences.
Prof. Dr. Stefan Berger (Direktor, Institut für soziale Bewegungen, Ruhr-Universität Bochum)
PD Dr. Philipp Müller (Vertretungsprofessor Neuere und Neueste Geschichte, Universität Kassel / Seminar für Mittlere und Neuere Geschichte, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen)