BGHS.NEWS

Summer is here!



Foto: Pixabay.com

And so another busy semester is drawing to a close! Before everyone heads off on holiday or into the intensive writing phase, we’d like to take a moment to look back.

First of all, we’d like to offer our warmest congratulations to the 15 BGHS graduates who have completed their PhDs since January 2026. In chronological order, they are:

Armin Küchler (sociology): Spaces of Susceptibility: Social Contexts and Radicalization

Svenja Holste (sociology): The Arctic We Know?! On scientist’s perceptions and factors of knowledge production in permafrost research and glaciology

Marcel Beyer (sociology): Imagine the Possible. Societal Futures Literacies und Critical Hope am Beispiel sozialwissenschaftlicher Wirtschaftsbildung in der Hochschullehre

Zaza Zindel (sociology): Engaging the Digital Society: Opportunities and Challenges of Social Media Recruitment

Lena Gumpert (history): Individualitätspraktiken, Geschlechtskonstruktion und Relationierungen im 12. Jahrhundert. Eine Untersuchung von Guiberts Monodiae sowie des Briefwechsels zwischen Heloise und Abaelard

Lincoln Fontenele (sociology): The Theory of Social Inclusion Meets Peripheral Modernity: Challenges for Workers in the Face of Brazilian Labor Market Reform of 2017

Atefeh Ramsari (sociology): Navigating Boundaries: Citizenship Dynamics and Ethnonational Politics in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq and the North and East Syria Region

Kai-Sören Falkenhain (sociology): Integrationsfunktionen von Konflikten im Wohlfahrtsstaat. Der Zusammenhang von Integration, Konflikt und Brokerage im kommunalen Wohlfahrtssystem Duisburgs

Marius Maile (history): Artefakte in der Virtual Reality – 3D-Rekonstruktion technischer Mehrkörpersysteme und deren interaktive Nutzung im dreidimensionalen Raum

Basak Naz Simsek (sociology): Challenging state-centrism, examining globalism: international criminal justice through hybrid institutionalism

Lorena Albornoz (history): Los parlamentos hispano-Mapuche y chileno-Mapuche: co-creación normativa, transformaciones y parlamenticidio de un orden diplomático (siglos XVI-XIX)

Nike Retzmann (sociology): Narrating Power. Technological Change and Power Comparisons in U.S. and Canadian Foreign Policy Debates

Cansu Erdogan Cengiz (sociology): Re-Thinking Agenda-Setting as a Gradual Process: The Prolonged Emergence of the Turkish Long-Term Care System under Domestic Pressures and Global Influences

Dorian Tsolak (sociology): New Methodological Approaches for the Analysis of Multi-Modal Digital Traces from Social Media in Computational Social Science

Oluwasinmisade Akin-Aina (sociology): Dissent, Dissonance, and Dis-Identification: Acts of Citizenship of Burundian Refugees in Transnational Social Spaces

We are glad that the BGHS could accompany you in the doctoral phase!

There was plenty going on at the BGHS in the first half of the year. In two online events, BGHS alumni shared insights into their professional fields. Franziska Wittau, Director of the Thuringian State Agency for Political Education, Christian Ulbricht, Director of the Regional Centre for Democratic Culture in Vorpommern-Greifswald, and Simon Lange, CDU parliamentary group leader on Bielefeld City Council, spoke in January about their day-to-day work in the fields of politics and political education and offered advice on how to get started in these career paths. At the end of April, the programme continued with Christiane Heß from the Hamburg Memorials and Learning Sites Foundation, Torben Möbius at the Leipzig State Archives, Martin Breuer from the office of the German Digital Library Competence Network at the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation in Berlin, and Christian Möller from the Historical Museum in Bielefeld, taking us into very different areas of the cultural sector. These were inspiring events that gave us a real sense of the exciting and diverse career opportunities available to sociology and history PhD graduates outside academia. Many thanks to Clara Buitrago for organising the events!

The public lecture series ‘Linie 4’ took place for the tenth time in collaboration with VHS Bielefeld. Under the theme ‘Warriors, Wars, Crises’, four inspiring lectures were held. Hannah von Legat spoke about Vikings in the context of pop culture and populism. Anastasia Serikova focused on the portrayal of ongoing wars in museums. Marcus Wystub explored the question of whether our times have gone off the rails and what Derrida has to say on the matter. And Ole Bunte discussed how medieval historians wrote about war. Not only did we learn a great deal, but we also had a brilliant time.

Little by little, the videos from the BGHS film project ‘On People and Things – Science in Conversation’ have also been released. Eight BGHS doctoral researchers talk on camera about how they chose their research topics, what they encounter during their fieldwork, and why their research is so highly relevant. The participants are: Iris Bartelt, Lorena Albornoz, Paul Goerigk, Yixuan Liu, Markus Buderath, Tiantian Li, Mariana Gomes and Christina Zschieschang. Click here for the playlist.

And we’ve also released six new episodes of the BGHS podcast ‘Chances and Challenges’. We spoke to Martina Kessel about her views on PhD supervision, internationalisation and gender history. Thomas Faist explains how doctoral researchers develop into researchers. Sophie Borchelt discusses balancing children, work and her doctoral thesis. Clara Buitrago shares how she manages her PhD and career whilst living with a chronic illness, and finds the ‘good life’. One episode was produced by four doctoral researchers: Iris Bartelt, Jakob Krusche, Josué Garcia Veiga and Christina Zschieschang share insights into their everyday lives and the experiences they’ve had through the various activities involved in their PhDs. And in the latest episode, Simon Groß talks about what it’s like to work outside the university whilst doing a PhD. The podcast isn’t just entertaining; it also offers the chance to explore aspects of the doctorate that don’t usually receive much attention.

And on that note, we wish you a lovely summer and a relaxing break from lectures!