Press Kit

The German Historical Institute London is a centre of research for German and British academics and students. As part of the Max Weber Foundation, it is one of a group of eleven German institutes for humanities research outside Germany, and is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research. The current director is Prof Dr Christina von Hodenberg.

The GHIL is extremely popular with historians of all eras working on colonial history and global relations or the history of Great Britain and Ireland. The Institute is also an important meeting point for UK historians whose research concerns the history of the German-speaking lands. Key to this is its comprehensive and up-to-date library, with its main focus on German history.

Research among the Institute's historians currently focuses on intellectual history, media history, social and gender history. Additional collaborative projects, such as the Euroscepticism project, are concerned with political cultures. The India Research Programme works closely with project partners in India and has been engaged in long-term collaborative research on India, on topics such as education and the urban, and heritage and popular history. The GHIL is a collaboration partner in numerous other research projects on British, European and colonial and global history, and is also involved in digital humanities initiatives.

The GHIL organises international conferences, seminars and postgraduate workshops and annually awards a prize for outstanding theses as well as numerous scholarships. Outreach activities also include the Institute's blog and social media, public events and exhibitions. The publications of the GHIL – theses, dissertations, professorial treatises, conference volumes and the Edition British Envoys to Germany – are published by Oxford or Cambridge University Press, De Gruyter Oldenbourg and Berghahn Books.

Supporting early career researchers is a key mission of the GHIL. Most of the historians employed at the GHIL are at the postdoc stage of their careers, working on their second book. In addition, every year the GHIL offers numerous scholarships of varying duration and other modes of academic exchange such as master classes, study groups, workshops, conferences and seminars.