Month: November 2017

Theorie trifft Praxis (Melanie Bardian)

November 29, 2017

Sich gemeinsam, regelmäßig und eng vernetzt mit Promovierenden und Wissenschaftlern aus anderen Ländern austauschen ist eines der Hauptziele des trinationalen Doktorandenkollegs. Umso zentraler sind die halbjährlichen Treffen, die turnusmäßig von den drei Partnern der Doktorandenschule veranstaltet werden. Vom 8. bis zum 10. November tagte das Doktorandenkolleg in Paris. Dort trafen sich das wissenschaftliche Leitungsteam (Prof. Dietmar Hüser, Prof. Hélène Miard-Delacroix und Prof. Andreas Fickers), die TeilnehmerInnen des Kollegs sowie Gast- und NachwuchswissenschaftlerInnen um gemeinsam über das diesjährige Leitthema Raumdiagnosen: Nationales & Transnationales zu diskutieren. Neben dieser theoretisch-methodischen Komponente nahm auch der Blick in die (Berufs-)Praxis einen wichtigen Platz ein.

Jasmin Nicklas und Dr. Christian Wenkel

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A few thoughts on contemporary history (Ben Zenner)

November 7, 2017

A couple of days, ago, over dinner, I had an interesting discussion with some fellow PhD students about why we do historical research and who we think will benefit from our efforts.

It turns out that over the past few months, many of the articles and books I read for my research ended up pointing me to similar questions, in particular about contemporary history. What is the current state of that field? What are the particular challenges of writing contemporary history today? How does (or doesn’?) contemporary history relate to neighbouring disciplines, in particular of the social sciences? Finally, how can we as historians use these scholars’ interpretations of and from the period that we study, and what can we add to their descriptions of past reality?

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Automated reminders of documenting your work (Max Kemman)

November 3, 2017

During your PhD (and perhaps also before or after), it might be a good idea to keep track of what you have done during the day. My supervisor told me to maintain a sort of diary early on. My problem for a long time was to be conscientious enough to actually write down what happened. The first problem was to remember to write down what happened, and when I would finally remember on Friday to do so, I already had long forgotten about all the things I had done during a week. The second problem was to know what to write down. What is of interest? Surely not what I had for lunch! A problem with a diary page is that it’s entirely empty, it does not tell you what it wants to know.

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