Teaching at the Section of Contemporary History

We teach on topics such as migration and borders, political cultures and systems, the consequences of wars and conflicts, family and gender, images and media, and trade and consumption. In these courses, we discuss historical, social and cultural theories on globalisation, digitisation and networks on the one hand, and state surveillance and nationalism on the other.
We analyse how global phenomena are shaped in different regions, nation states and cities of the world, but also village communities and border regions. In doing so, we discover the perspectives of different historical actors such as Latin American smallholders, migrants, workers or highly mobile entrepreneurs.
We test how to deal with the diverse sources of contemporary history, such as archive documents, photographs, audio-visual media, everyday objects and biographical interviews. We provide insights into research on socio-politically relevant topics and enable students to gain initial experience in research projects.
In addition to classic face-to-face teaching, our didactic focus is on online teaching and innovative e-learning methods.

You can find the courses taught by the academic staff of the section in the current academic year in the menu on the left. Information on the study programmes is available at the Institute of History.