Institute for Economic and Social History

Our research focuses primarily on business history, the history of consumption and the history of globalization in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

We offer students different degree programs: a B.A. in Economic and Social History, an M.A. "History of Global Markets", and (jointly with the universities of Glasgow, Barcelona and Rotterdam) the Erasmus Mundus Programme "Global Markets, Local Creativities" (GLOCAL).

News from the Institute

---

• Dr. Witzel de Souza’s podcast for the Deutsche Welle: bicentennial of German immigration to Brazil
  
  In its series commemorating the bicentennial of German immigration to Brazil, the Deutsche Welle Brazil interviewed Dr. Bruno Witzel de Souza, research associate at the Institute for Economic & Social History. The podcast (15 min, in Portuguese) deals with the so-called “Sharecropper’s Rebellion” and the ensuing “Rescript von der Heydt”. By the mid-1850s, Swiss and German immigrants in Brazilian coffee plantations struck against their working conditions, instigating Prussia to enact an edict – later extended to the German Empire – that cancelled hiring licenses of some firms engaging and transporting immigrants to Brazil until 1896. Dr. Witzel de Souza discusses these events and their implications for the Age of Mass Migration in the Atlantic economy.
  
  Find the podcast here:
  YouTube
  Spotify
  Deutsche Welle
  
  
  

  ---

• Successful EU Funding Bid for GLOCAL (2025-2028)
  
  The Erasmus Mundus MA Program "Global Markets, Local Creativities“ (GLOCAL) has successfully been awarded funding from the European Commission for a third consecutive project! This means that we will be able to offer Erasmus Mundus Scholarships to four new cohorts of students applying from 2025 to 2028. We are looking forward to a new round of collaborative teaching with our partners in Glasgow, Rotterdam, Barcelona, Uppsala, Kyoto and Los Andes!
  The new program will offer enhanced employability and skills development opportunities to students, and further develop our relations with our international partners. The GLOCAL consortium will also be launching two new study pathways, which will explore entrepreneurship in the global economy and global markets. With one of these pathways, students will for the first time have the opportunity to start out their GLOCAL journey at Göttingen University!
  
  
  



• Job offer
  The Institute for Economic and Social History offers a position as Scientific Assistant in full time as soon as possible. | For more informatoin visit the vacancies.
  
  
• GLOCAL Evaluated as „Good Practice" by EU Agency
  The European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA) found high praise for our Erasmus Mundus MA Program GLOCAL in its acceptance of the final report for the first funding period. The program received a mark of 90/100 and may be “flagged as good practice in the Erasmus+ Project Results Platform”. We would like to take this opportunity to express our gratitude to all of our colleagues in Göttingen, Glasgow, Rotterdam, Barcelona, Kyoto, Los Andes and Uppsala for their efforts and commitment to the program, and to all GLOCAL students and alumni who have made the program the success that it is! We look forward to the seventh cohort, which is due to start in Glasgow this fall.


• New paper by Bruno Gabriel Witzel de Souza on "Precedents of mass migration" published
  The paper "Precedents of mass migration: policies, occupations, and the sorting of foreigners in São Paulo, Brazil (1872)" by Dr Bruno Gabriel Witzel de Souza has been published as the leading article in the current issue of Economic History of Developing Regions.


• Publication Glocal Issues - Local Alternatives
  Bakhcheva, Iryna, Adua Dalla Costa, Anna Katharina Grill et al. (Hrsg.), Global Issues – Local Alternatives, Göttingen University Press, Göttingen 2021
  
  Students of the Erasmus Mundus MA program „Global Markets, Local Creativities“ published results of their thesis research in a collaborative edited volume which just came out with Göttingen University Press. The volume offers case studies concerning local responses to global market processes under the headings of Space and Sustainability. The project was supported by the AKB Foundation and their program „Kreativität im Studium“.
  
  Open-Access PDF: link


• WELT interview with Prof. Dr. Berghoff
  In a detailed interview with the German newspaper WELT, Prof. Dr. Hartmut Berghoff, head of the Institute for Economic and Social History, compares the current corona crisis with the flu pandemic of 1957/58, which was largely passively accepted despite higher numbers of victims.
  
  The Bavarian Broadcasting Corporation (Bayerischer Rundfunk) has also taken up the topic and emphasized the expectation of long lifetimes, which has become the norm. Article in German


• GLOCAL Excursion to Berlin, Jan. 30 - 31, 2020
  With the end of the semester near, Göttingen Glocal students embarked on a trip to Berlin. For more information about the excursion, please follow the link.
  
  
• Cohort II Thesis Workshop Göttingen, Feb. 7 - 8, 2020
  On Feb. 7-8 Göttingen Glocals had their first of two thesis workshops. We had an exciting program of presentations that took us (among other places) from the highlands of Scotland to the streets of Baltimore and the coffee shops of Barcelona. We discussed diverse topics ranging from financial education in Brazil, to beauty markets in China and shipping in the Arctic. Students received first feedback from their supervisors in Göttingen and - remotely via video-link - from their committee members in Barcelona and Glasgow. In addition, Duncan Ross (Glasgow) and Steven Ivings (Kyoto) flew out to participate in these two days of lively discussion. Duncan and Steven were also part of a joint workshop which brought together faculty and PhD students from Göttingen, Glasgow and Kyoto held at the same time to expand research connections within the GLOCAL consortium. With a focus on the fields of migration, business, and financial history, PhD students discussed their dissertation topics and had a stimulating exchange on differences in academic life between Germany, Scotland, and Japan. The PhD workshop was funded by the Schottlandinitiative des Landes Niedersachsens that aims to foster academic exchange between Lower Saxon and Scottish universities.


• Congratulations, Privatdozent Alexander Engel!
  By passing his trial lecture on the marginalist revolution, Alexander Engel successfully completed his habilitation. He received the venia legendi in Economic and Social History. The Institute for Economic and Social History congratulates Alex on his achievement!


• Publication: „Organizations Matter: German Schools and Educational Performance Amid Brazilian Coffee Plantations (1840–1940)“
  Dr. Bruno Gabriel Witzel de Souza’s article „Organizations Matter: German Schools and Educational Performance Amid Brazilian Coffee Plantations (1840–1940)“ was published in the edited volume „Globalization and the Rise of Mass Education.“ The edited volume was presented at the University of Göttingen on December 3rd, 2019, in an event organized by Dr. Bruno Gabriel Witzel de Souza. To find out more about the book, follow the following link. A short summary of the conference is available here.


• Publication in Business History: “Global trading companies in the commodity chain of rubber between 1890 and the 1920s”
  Bastian Linneweh has published an article on the role of global trading companies in the commodity chain of rubber in Business History. To access the article online, please follow the following link.


• Book Publication: „Engineered to Sell. European Émigrés and the Making of Consumer Capitalism“
  In his book „ Engineered to Sell: European Émigrés and the Making of Consumer Capitalism,” PD Dr. Jan Logemann traces the transnational careers of consumer engineers in advertising, market research, and commercial design who transformed capitalism from the 1930s through the 1960s. The book was published in November 2019 by the University of Chicago Press. For more information, please visit the following website.


• Book Publication: „Die fotografische Inszenierung des Verbrechens. Ein Album aus Auschwitz“
  In their book „Die fotografische Inszenierung des Verbrechens: Ein Album aus Auschwitz“ Dr. Stefan Hördler, Tal Bruttmann, and Christoph Kreutzmüller (Humboldt University of Berlin) offer the first critical analysis of photographs taken in the concentration camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau. For more information about the book, please follow the following link [German].


• Presentation: Auschwitz and the Nazi Concentration Camps through the Lens of the SS. Perpetrator Photography and Self-Perception
  For the first time in its 30-year history, the biennial „Special Lessons & Legacies Conference“ was held in Europe at the Centre for Holocaust Studies in Munich. Representing our institute, Dr. Stefan Hördler gave a presentation on „Auschwitz and the Nazi Concentration Camps through the Lens of the SS: Perpetrator Photography and Self-Perception." For more information about the conference, please follow the following link.


• Book Publication: Consumer Engineering, 1920s–1970s: Marketing between Expert Planning and Consumer Responsiveness
  Edited by PD Dr. Jan Logemann, PD Dr. Ingo Köhler, and Gary Cross (Penn State University), „Consumer Engineering, 1920s–1970s: Marketing between Expert Planning and Consumer Responsiveness” assembles twelve articles of distinguished historians who deal with consumer engineering in the context of the longer history of transatlantic marketing. Contributors offer case studies on the roles of individual consumer engineers on both sides of the Atlantic, the impact of such marketing practices on European economies during World War II and after, and the conflicted relationship between consumer activists and the ideas of consumer engineering. By connecting consumer engineering to a web of social processes in the twentieth century, this volume contributes to a reassessment of consumer history more broadly. For more information, please click here.


• Extension of Glocal Programme: EU Grants 4.4 Million € for Second Funding Period
  The Master's degree programme "Global Markets. Local Creativities" (GLOCAL) has been extended by the Education, Audiovisual and Cultural Agency (EACEA) of the EU within the framework of the Erasmus+ programme for a second funding period (2020-24). The programme is aimed at foreign students and has attracted over 900 applicants in recent years, of whom around 40 have been admitted to the programme in the winter semester. Scholarships are available for approx. 25 students. They study at three universities of the GLOCAL consortium, which now includes the founding members Glasgow, Barcelona, Göttingen and Rotterdam as well as Uppsala (Sweden), Los Andes (Colombia) and Kyoto (Japan). More information on the program can be found here.


• Publication in Administory. Journal for the History of Public Administration
  Dr. Robert Bernsee „Gefühlskalte Bürokratie: Emotionen im Verwaltungshandeln des frühen 19. Jahrhunderts“ in Volume 3, Issue 1, S. 147-163. Link


• Third Congress for Economy- and Social history
  PD Dr. Jan Logemann got admidet to be a member of the committee at the “Verein für Socialpolitik” after his talk about the historical roots of consumption of the behavioral Economics. We kindly congratulate him!
  Dr. Alexander Engel channeled the talk and discussion of a publication project addressed to “Crime of the Markets” and our new member of the institute Dr. Bruno Witzel de Souza hold a presentation about the European, Asian and Latin-American migration towards Brazil.


• „Auf den Spuren der Konkurrenz"
  In his collective volume, Dr. Alexander Engel and his colleagues focus on the phenomenon of competition from an interdisciplinary perspective. Klick the link to learn more about it.


• Congratulation Privatdozent Jan Logemann!
  With his trial lecture Jan Logemann completed his habilitation and achieved the venia legend in “newer and recent history”. The Team of the institute of Economic- and Social History kindly congratulates.


• GLOCAL Summer School: “Mittelstand goes Global: Local Roots and Internationalization Pathways of SMEs”, August 25-31
  The first summer school of Global Markets, Local Creativities (GLOCAL) took place at the University of Göttingen from August 25-31, 2018. For further information regarding the summer school, including some phtographic impressions and a link to a great blog post by a student participant, see our GLOCAL page.
  


• DFG funds project on the economic and social history of reproductive medicine
  The German Research Foundation has granted funds for a three year project "Between markets and morals: modern reproductive medicine in West Germany, 1970-1990". The project will be carried out by Denise Lehner.


• JMEH issue "Public Debt and Financialization after 1945"
  Issue 4/2017 of the Journal of Modern European History is devoted to public debt and financialization after 1945. The issue was edited by Prof. Dr. Hartmut Berghoff and Prof. Dr. Laura Rischbieter (Konstanz).