21.02.2017

New blog: Europe Across Borders

The blog »Europe Across Borders« is a forum for historical research on Europe across borders from around 1500 to the present. It advances historical knowledge in present scholarly and public debates.

The blog posts cross and reflect boundaries not merely between nation states or cultures but also between social, economic, religious, ethnic, gender, and other entities. The blog thus fosters research on the dynamics in Europe from the early modern period into the twentieth century and the immediate past. The blog is open to a broad variety of topics, both with regard to methodological approaches and fields of research. Methodologically, it brings together approaches such as comparative studies, the study of transfer processes and entanglements, the histoire croisée, or international, imperial and global history. Beyond that, the blog takes up all fields of cultural, political, social, economic, environmental and intellectual history throughout Europe in the modern period. It is especially interested in providing a fresh picture on Europe’s place in a globalising world.

The blog connects PhD candidates, early career and advanced researchers in European history across borders. For this purpose it shares information on research projects, relevant publications, and scholarly events. By debating scholarly and contemporary issues it addresses scholars also as members of the European polity and is reaching out to the general public by providing historical context to modern controversies, bridging the past with the present. The aim is to advance historical knowledge and inform debates on Europe from a historical perspective.

Europe Across Borders is a blog by research fellows in the department of history at the Leibniz Institute of European History (IEG) at Mainz, Germany. The IEG comprises of one of the most active group of historians currently working on Europe from the early modern period to the twentieth century in Germany. It brings together the strong research expertise of early career and advanced historians. Our blog offers dynamic and innovative explorations of European history, and we warmly welcome guest submissions that will widen the blog’s horizon. The blog is connected to the annual workshop European History Across Boundaries which takes place at Mainz for international PhD students who research European history from the sixteenth to the twentieth century, including Europe’s relations with the world. The workshop brings together young researchers working in this field to present their dissertation projects and to discuss the transcultural and transnational scope of their findings in a stimulating environment. The blog is also linked to the open access journal European History Yearbook, ed. by Johannes Paulmann (Mainz) together with Markus Friedrich (Hamburg) and Nicholas Stargardt (Oxford).