Research Spectrum

A unifying research question across numerous projects at the GWZO concerns which forms of knowledge about the past are relevant for societies and in which processes of self-reflection and debate among different groups this knowledge is mobilised (Leibniz Research Alliance »Value of the Past«). This question underpins several forward-looking research proposals that place a much stronger emphasis than before on popular culture and the history of lived experience. It is also being continuously developed in relation to public archaeology at the interface between archaeology and contemporary history.

The well-established collaboration among archaeologists, medievalists and natural scientists continues to expand. Further initiatives point towards a transnational history of entanglement between the geo- and biosciences, with the aim of bringing natural history and cultural history together from the perspective of the history of science.

This traditionally strong research area at the GWZO is being approached in new and diverse ways. Existing research priorities and networks on resource use continue, with the Leibniz Research Network »Knowledge for Sustainable Development« (LFN Sustain) serving as an important site of collaboration beyond the institute. Within this framework, research conducted at the GWZO can be applied to ecological spatial planning and sustainability studies. Several research themes share a focus on how landscapes have changed under the impact of resource use. These themes span the period from Late Antiquity to the present and address transformations of natural and cultural landscapes driven by the exploitation of resources. Planned projects will examine the transformation of mining landscapes in the recent past.

The history of water infrastructure and water management has been established as a connecting theme across the institute. At the intersection of environmental, infrastructure and economic history, artificial waterways — such as cross-border canals and the navigability of rivers — as well as water use in Central and Eastern Europe more broadly constitute a unifying research focus.

The cultural formative power of spatial design will also remain a key research question. A promising new perspective lies in the planned engagement with experiences of space and the turn towards the sensory dimensions of urban and natural environments.

Questions concerning the practices of economic activity are being brought together and newly reframed at the GWZO. In the »Entanglements and Globalisation« department, economic-historical research has so far focused primarily on macroeconomic processes and economic policy. This work is now being brought into conversation with a growing interest in a social and everyday life history of the economy, which also encompasses small-scale trade, crafts and applied arts, as well as the economic dimensions of phenomena and processes relating to memory culture (Leibniz Research Alliance »Value of the Past«). In addition, the category of »gender« is to be progressively strengthened within the field of labour and economic history.

For the further development of the institute, the globally embedded history of Central and Eastern Europe — so far a research strength in the modern period — is to serve as a trans-epochal profile. Beyond this, the GWZO will continue to work on the conceptual foundations of a global history of Central and Eastern Europe. This approach aims to anchor the history of Central and Eastern Europe more firmly within the discipline of history, to offer conceptual frameworks for other area studies and to further advance work at the institute on the guiding theme of »Regionalisations and Transregionalisations« from a global-historical perspective.

The institute is developing questions concerning the ending of (armed) violence and the subsequent intragroup and societal transformations of violence across different communities and historical periods as a long-term, cross-cutting thematic focus (with the working title: »After Violence«). In the coming years, the GWZO will bring together established research priorities in the fields of international law, looted art (Bellum et Artes) and approaches to cultural heritage in post-conflict situations, peace settlements (a current book project of the »Humans and Environment« department) and the monarchies of East-Central Europe in the Late Middle Ages as stabilising factors following dynastic change (medieval history and art history). These fields will be newly reframed with a particular focus on the aftereffects of violence and the ways in which experiences of violence continue to shape societies internally.