In
Past events 2022, Past events 2023
The lunchtime colloquium ("ltc") of the gd:c continues in the winter term. The first session will take place on 25 October. The colloquium takes place on Tuesdays from 11.30 am to 1 pm at the library of the Research Centre.
You can download the programme of the lunchtime colloquium HERE. Continue Reading
lunchtime colloquium winter term 22/23
The lunchtime colloquium ("ltc") of the gd:c continues in the winter term. The first session will take place on 25 October. The colloquium takes place on Tuesdays from 11.30 am to 1 pm at the library of the Research Centre.
You can download the programme of the lunchtime colloquium HERE. Continue Reading
25 October 2021
Tom Menger, historian at the Kolleg, has written on German colonial history in East Africa in the work of Nobel laureate Abdulrazak Gurnah. His German language article can be found in today’s Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (
Dis:connectivity in processes of globalisation: theories, methodologies, explorations
gd:c annual conference (hybrid), 20-21 Oct 22
Today, our first five research fellows join the Kolleg. A very warm welcome to Christina Brauner (Tübingen), Ann-Sophie Schoepfel (Harvard/Sciences Po), Änne Söll (Bochum), Sabine Sörgel (Surrey) and Callie Wilkinson (Warwick)!
Christina Brauner’s research on cross-cultural diplomacy in West Africa, (dis)entanglement, translation, narratives of misunderstanding, and the history of religion has exposed her to the distinct academic cultures in Münster, Bielefeld, Berlin, London, Princeton, and her current academic home in Tubingen. Her work in global history is informed by a strong interest in theory and historical methodology, with a particular focus on the inescapable concepts of time and temporality. At global dis:connect, Christina is investigating markets in the border region of the Lower Rhine, where competition and borders both constituted markets as social institutions and dis:connected the subjects involved.
Ann-Sophie Schoepfel’s intellectual background covers History, Art History, Anthropology, International Relations, International Law, and Legal History along with stops in Paris, Heidelberg, Tokyo, Hanoi and Harvard. Her research on the colonialist implications of war-crimes trials in Asia as well as on Vietnamese migration in the context of the Cold War has earned her numerous awards and academic honors. Sophie’s current research at global dis:connect centers Afro-Asian voices — jurists, writers, and anticolonial revolutionaries — from across the French former colonial empire, as they struggled to reimagine state sovereignty and international law in the Cold War crucible.
Änne Söll’s work focuses on the art of the 20th and 21st centuries, particularly on aspects of gender, mainly masculinities. Other areas of interest are period rooms, magazines, photography, video installations and the art of the Weimar Republik, specifically the Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity). While at global dis:connect, Änne is reconstructing the lives of three Jewish art historians — all women — who were forced to flee Germany in the 1930s and went on to forge successful careers as curators in the USa from 1950s onwards. A key question is how the strategies employed by these female art historians bridge the gaps and/or dealt with the voids in their professional careers while trying to re-connect to the global world of art history.
Sabine Sörgel combines her passion for travel and dance with sophisticated, philosophically informed theories derived from critical theory, philosophy, sociology, and theatre. Through sojourns in Mainz, Aberystwyth, London, and Jamaica, Sabine has published on performance, post-colonial politics, global culture, and the social power implicated in various gazes. While visiting global dis:connect, Sabine is researching how public performances over the last decade have invoked images of race, identity, rights, history, and memory.
Callie Wilkinson studies the dramatic expansion of the British Empire in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and its sociocultural impact at home and abroad. In previous research projects conducted at Cambridge and the University of Warwick, she has examined how the idea of indirect rule was contested within the British East India Company as well as the contemporary debates on the extent to which information about the Company should be disseminated to the public. At global:disconnect, Callie is investigating how Company soldiers’ testimony affected broader discourses about the Company’s military operations in an age before professional war correspondents.
On 24 September, Burcu Dogramaci, art historian and one of the Kolleg’s directors, gave a keynote lecture at the conference “Crossing Borders. Migration and the Visual Arts in Denmark” at the Royal Danish Academy of Science and Letters in Copenhagen. The keynote „Beyond Boundaries: Migration as a Challenge to Art History" discussed the challenge of bringing dislocation and (art)history together.
On 16 September, Christopher Balme, theatre scholar and one of the Kolleg’s directors, spoke on “Theatre and globalization” at the Goethe Center, Yeriwan, Armenia.
In September 2022, the international conference "Roads to Exclusion: Socio-Spatial Dynamics of Mobility Infrastructures since 1800" will take place at the GHI Washington. It aims to explore the (intended or unintended) dynamics of inclusion and exclusion entailed in mobility infrastructures, ranging from the nineteenth century to the present. The event is jointly organized by the German Historical Institute Washington within the framework of its research area “Histories of Mobilities and Migration” and global dis:connect.
The conference will take place from September 8–10, 2022 and will be hosted by the German Historical Institute in Washington D.C.
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On 3 September, Burcu Dogramaci, art historian and one of the Kolleg’s directors, co-delivered a lecture at the Jahrestagung der Gesellschaft für Exilforschung at the NS-Dokumentationszentrum in Munich. The talk „Erinnerung findet Stadt. Vergegenwärtigung von Exil an den Orten von einst“ looked at dis:connectivity in the context of memory and exile.
From 3 to 5 August the Käte Hamburger Kolleg global dis:connect will hold its first annual interdisciplinary Summer School at the premises of the center. This year, we will focus on Postcolonial interruptions? Decolonisation and global dis:connectivity and explore how dynamics of decolonisation reordered processes of globalization. We will ask how geopolitical alliances, economic networks, and cultural as well as epistemological bonds were questioned and interrupted permanently or temporarily and at the same time existing connections were reshaped, and new ones appeared. The Centre invites scholars and artists in early stages of their careers to discuss related projects with experts. The courses will foster dialogue between various scholarly approaches and artistic research.
Click 
On 4 July, author and journalist Timo Feldhaus presented his book of historical fiction on the eruption of the Mount Tambora volcano (Sumbawa, modern Indonesia) in 1815. The eruption was the most powerful volcanic eruption in recorded history, and it induced climatic, social and artistic repercussions that affected the entire planet for years. Together with Urs Büttner, a scholar of literature, Feldhaus discussed the event as a moment of global rupture that demonstrates the dis:connections between the weather, climate and artistic production. For more information about the book click