History

Methodologically speaking, the study employs the central analytical tool of the Histoire Croisée, namely focusing on different échelles or scales. One of the key questions of the study is: How did Quakers, considering their pacifism and involvement in humanitarian projects, negotiate the violence of the frontier?

From 2005 to 2010, Eva Bischoff taught North American History and Postcolonial Studies at the Universities of Cologne, Bonn, and Münster. From April 2010 to September 2011, she worked as a Lecturer at the Department of North American History of the John-F.-Kennedy Institute at the Freie Universität Berlin, and as a Postdoc Researcher at the DFG Research Center on “Governance in Areas of Limited Statehood” (SFB 700).

Her current Australian Research Council-funded project, ‘Slavery, Sugar, Race: South Sea Islanders in Australia’, explores the connections between Atlantic and Pacific sugar plantations and non-free labour, and she is currently exploring these links beyond the Australian colonial context to include the German, French and US spheres of influence in the Pacific. She is the originator of a prototype Pacific Labour Database, funded by the Australian Centre for Human Rights, that seeks to make an openly available, searchable database of all non-free Pacific Islander labourers in the colonial period. Emma is also a documentary maker, having made two award-winning documentaries, and is currently working on a film about kidnapping in German and Australian New Guinea.

He completed his PhD in American History in Berkeley and Cologne and wrote his habilitation on the French occupation of Germany, 1794 to 1814. From 1990 to 1992 be served as Deputy Director of the German Historical Institute in Washington, DC. In 1992 he accepted a professorship at the University of Hamburg. In 2001 he was appointed Professor of History at Cologne, in which capacity he researched and taught until 2016. Since 2018 Finzsch teaches American History as an adjunct at the John F. Kennedy Institute (Free University) in Berlin and since 2020 at the Sigmund Freud University in Berlin.

Finzsch has published about the history of genocides in North America. Starting with a comparative approach to genocide history, studying the histories of indigenous peoples in Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, he morphed into one of the few German historians who work on Australia. In 2003 he was a awarded a fellowship by the HRC in Canberra for the study of Aboriginal history. Since then he has published numerous articles on Australian history.

In 2018, Oliver is Guest Researcher at the Linnaeus University Center for Concurrences in Colonial and Postcolonial Studies, Sweden. His research interests lie in the areas of European formations of Indigeneity, postcolonial and whiteness theory, German imperialism and transnational history. Oliver has co-edited a book on ego-histoire and Indigenous Studies, Ngapartji Ngapartji: Reciprocal Engagement (Australian National University Press, 2014). His latest book – entitled The Persistence of Race from the Wilhelmine Empire to National Socialism (Berghahn Books, 2017) – is concerned with cultural narratives of race in Germany. With Eva Schandevijl he has completed a special issue of National Identities (Routledge) and, with Linda Westphalen, a special issue of JEASA on Ruby Langford Ginibi. Oliver’s scholarship has appeared, inter alia, in Continuum, Aboriginal History and Australian Aboriginal Studies. He is co-editor of the bilingual Australian Studies Journal (Zeitschrift für Australienstudien).

In his current research project, he examines the fight for the repatriation of Indigenous Ancestral Remains in Australia and the United States from the early 1970s to the present.

His project investigates the conflicts between Indigenous activists, scientists, and museum representatives regarding repatriations of Indigenous Ancestral Remains in Australia and the United States in the 1970s and 1980s. In addition, it analyses the differing implications of the return of Indigenous Ancestral Remains based on museum policies in Australia since the late 1980s and legally mandated practices of repatriation in the United States since 1990. Moreover, the project discusses the conflicts over the repatriation of Australian and US-American Indigenous Ancestral Remains from British and German museums and collections from the early 1990s until today.

In 2011 and 2012, Silvan Niedermeier was a postdoctoral research fellow at the DFG Graduate School “Cultural Contact and Discourses of Scholarship” at the University of Rostock. Since 2013, he works as a postdoctoral researcher and lecturer at the Chair of North American history at the University of Erfurt. His research and teaching focuses on imperial and colonial history, gender history, the history of racism and visual history. In 2019, he published The Color of the Third Degree. Racism, Police Torture, and Civil Rights in the American South, 1930−1955 (University of North Carolina Press).

Her academic research focuses on Commonwealth history, the global displacement of refugees, and tropical landscape design. In the past she has worked as a journalist in Sydney, as a research assistant at the University of Hamburg (Department of U.S. and Canadian History), and as a public relations adviser at the State Ministry of Nature and Conservation (Schleswig-Holstein). She held a DAAD research scholarship for Australia which started her particular interest in Australian history. Von Holleuffer has published work on Australian, American and Canadian migration and discovery history. She was historical adviser for Australian history at Gruner & Jahr Publishing House (Hamburg) and was the co-editor of the Australian Studies Journal for nearly ten years (2012-2021). Von Holleuffer has also been a Board member of the Association for Australian Studies (Public Relations) between 2009 and 2021. Von Holleuffer works as journalist and media adviser.  She is a member of the Australian Historical Association (AHA).

After completing her PhD in colonial history at the University of Melbourne in 2017, she joined the Cluster of Excellence for Religion and Politics at the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster in late 2018. There she habilitated with a study on the role of education to non-Europeans in the British colonial world of the nineteenth century (published by Manchester University Press in 2022). She is a mentor in the Graduate School of the Cluster and researchers into British and German colonial history, memory studies, migration history, cultural transfer, mission history, gender history and the history of science, especially ethnographical collections of the nineteenth century. She has taught Australian studies in Australia and Germany. Dr. Jensz is collaborating closely with Prof. Adone and team.

Dr Michael Pickering has worked extensively with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander organizations, State and Territory Heritage Agencies, and museums across Australia. Dr Pickering moved to the National Museum of Australia as the Director of the Repatriation Program in 2001, later taking on the role of Head of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Program, from 2004 to 2011. He then moved to the Research Centre. From 2013 to 2014 he was the Acting Head of the Australian Society and History Program. In 2015 he took up the position as Head of Research Centre. From 2018 to 2022 he has been the Senior Repatriation Advisor at the National Museum of Australia.

Dr Pickering is an Honorary Associate Professor with the Department of Museum and Heritage Studies at the Australian National University, an Honorary Professor with the Global Station for Indigenous Studies and Cultural Diversity, Hokkaido University, Japan, and a Partner with the Centre for Australian Studies, Cologne University, Germany. Dr. Pickering is collaborating closely with Prof. Adone and team.

Dr Pickering is on the editorial boards of the journals ‘Museum Management and Curatorship’ and ‘Museums and Social Issues’.  He is an ‘Expert Examiner’ under the Australian Protection of Moveable Cultural Heritage Act 1986.

He has a wide range of research interests and has published articles on topics ranging from material culture, cannibalism, settlement patterns, museum exhibitions, museum ethics, workplace health and safety, and repatriation.

Research Field(s)

Repatriation, Cannibalism, museum management of Indigenous cultural heritage, Hunter-gatherer settlement patterns.