Research Projects

Ongoing Projects

  • African and South Asian Diaspora Cultures in Contemporary Britain
    Led by: Prof. Dr. Jana Gohrisch
    Year: 2022
  • CALAS - Maria Sibylla Merian Center for Advanced Latin American Studies
    The Maria Sibylla Merian Center for Advanced Latin American Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences (CALAS) is an academic space dedicated to strengthening transdisciplinary and trans-regional academic cooperation in the Social Sciences and Humanities between Latin America and Germany.
    Led by: Prof. Dr. Christine Hatzky, Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Gabbert
    Year: 2022
    Funding: BMBF
    © Efrén Sandoval/CALAS
  • Colonial Traces in Hanover
    The realisation that Germany is a postcolonial society has become increasingly established among the German public in recent years. With this, the question of how Germany should deal with its own colonial past is also gaining in importance. In this context, projects on (post-)colonial tracing, especially those that turn their attention to hitherto less noticed locations, situations and actors, have a special academic and social relevance.
    Led by: Prof. Dr. Brigitte Reinwald, Jana Nadine Otto, M.A
    Year: 2022
    Stürzender Adler Stürzender Adler
  • ConnecCaribbean / Connected Worlds: The Caribbean. Origin of the Modern World
    Issues that shaped the Atlantic World since 1492 are addressed in this research project: trade and slave system, race, racism, imperial policies, resistances, circulation of knowledge, images, representations in and of the Caribbean, and development models.
    Led by: Prof. Dr. Christine Hatzky
    Team: PD Dr. Ulrike Schmieder und Natascha Rempel, M.A. & Vanessa Ohlraun, M.A
    Year: 2016
    Funding: EU Horizon 2020/Marie Skłodowska-Curie Action Grant
    Duration: 2019 - 2024
    © ConnecCaribbean - Connected Worlds
  • Erinnerungen an die atlantische Sklaverei. Frankreich und Spanien, die französische Karibik und Kuba im Vergleich und im Kontext globaler Debatten um das Gedenken an Sklavenhandel und Sklaverei
    Based on the researcher's studies on slavery and postemancipation, especially on the French overseas department of Martinique and on formerly Spanish Cuba, the treatment of historical remains (plantations with the houses of the enslavers and accommodations of the enslaved) and the establishment of memorial sites (monuments and museums) in France and Spain, Martinique and Cuba are examined in the context of global debates on enslavement and remembering, apologising, compensating.
    Led by: PD Dr. Ulrike Schmieder
    Year: 2018
    Duration: 2018-2022
  • Hollywood Memories: Cinematic Remaking and the Construction of Global Movie Generations
    Remaking is a long-standing Hollywood practice: an industrially motivated creative process that generates remakes, sequels, etc. over decades. At the intersection of American Studies, Memory Studies, Film Studies, Generational Theory and Global Studies, the project explores the long-term cultural impact of such films and assumes that they shape memories, lived experiences and generational identities of spectators in a globalised world. It is about how popular culture, media and memory construct generationality.
    Led by: Prof. Dr. Kathleen Loock, Stefan Dierkes, M.A., Alejandra Bulla Buritica, M.A.
    Team: Alissa Lienhard, Lida Shams-Mostofi, Brunella Tedesco-Barlocco
    Year: 2020
    Funding: DFG
    Duration: 2020-2026
  • Knowledge for Tomorrow: Postdoctoral Fellowships in the Humanities in Sub Saharan and North Africa
    The project “Knowledge for Tomorrow – Cooperative Research Projects in Sub-Saharan Africa” opens the possibility for research partnerships between German and African researches. At the same time, it promotes high-ranking humanists and social scientists on their way to a professorship and supports them in building international partnerships and academic networks. Furthermore, this project contributes to the education of young scientists and to the capacity building at African universities.
    Led by: Prof. Dr. Brigitte Reinwald
    Team: Rahel Kühne-Thies, M.A., Afrikanische Geschichte, Historisches Seminar und Petra Rothenhäuser, Verwaltung, Historisches Seminar
    Year: 2013
    Funding: VolkswagenStiftung
    Duration: 2013 - 2022
    © Knowledge for Tomorrow
  • Manuel de linguistique populaire
    Publication project: Handbook. Publication planned for June 2024. Publisher: De Gruyter This handbook discusses the concept of folk linguistics from a range of perspectives (i.e. historical). It also takes into account methodological questions, the collection of data, the relationship between folk linguistics and translation studies, lexicography, language teaching, and onomastics. Finally, it presents research findings that concern folk linguistics in the Romance-speaking areas.
    Led by: Prof. Dr. Lidia Becker, Dr. Sandra Herling, Dr. Holger Wochele
    Year: 2022
  • Multiplication: Modernity, Mass Culture, Gender in the United States 1910-1933
    This project explores US-American mass culture of the early 20th century with a close attention to their trans-Atlantic circulation and repercussions. It responds to the fact that the big dance revues of the 1910s and 20s gained emblematic significance for industrial modernity at large.
    Led by: Prof. Dr. Ruth Mayer
    Year: 2020
    Duration: 2020-2023
  • Networks of Exiles
    Networks of Exiles - Practices and Esthetics of the Transnational in Postrevolutionary Mexico of the 1920s to the 1940s The project aims to explore the role of exiles from Europe, Hispanic America and the Caribbean in the particular dynamics of political and cultural reconstitution in Mexico from the 1920s to the 1940s. It aims to investigate the diverse encounters and joint activities between exiles of different origins and Mexican artists, intellectuals and writers who understood the post-revolutionary consolidation phase under the presidency of Lázaro Cárdenas and Ávila Camacho as an opportunity for artistic experimentation and cultural re-location.
    Led by: Prof. Dr. Anja Bandau, Doerte Bischoff (Universität Hamburg)
    Year: 2020
    Funding: DFG
  • The Literature of Post-Slavery: Imagining Agency after Abolition
    Led by: Prof. Dr. Jana Gohrisch
    Year: 2022
  • Transatlantic Victorian Studies: Theory and Method
    Led by: Prof. Dr. Jana Gohrisch
    Year: 2022
  • TRUST - Transdisciplinary | rural and urban | spatial transformation
    TRUST aims to concentrate the research activities in the field of spatial transformation, to build up an interdisciplinary network, and to be a partner of choice for society, industry, public administration and politics; thus continuing the long tradition of spatial research at the Leibniz University Hannover.
    Team: Prof. Dr. Christine Hatzky, Prof. Dr. Brigitte Reinwald, PD Dr. Ulrike Schmieder, Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Gabbert & Dr. Hinnerk Onken
    Year: 2016
    © Isabel Winarsch für VolkswagenStiftung

Completed Projects

  • Afro-American Missionaries and Settlers in West Africa
    Part of the joint project "After Slavery - Comparing the Caribbean and Africa".
    Led by: Prof. Dr. Katja Füllberg-Stolberg
    Year: 2010
    Funding: DFG
    Duration: 2010-2013
  • After Slavery - Comparing the Caribbean and Africa
    Led by: Prof. Dr. Brigitte Reinwald
    Year: 2010
    Funding: DFG
    Duration: 2010-2013
  • Anthropology and Contemporary Visual Arts from the Black Atlantic
    Between the Art Museum and the Ethnological Museum in the Global North, Summer Schools in Dakar, Senegal (March 2019), Port-au-Prince, Haiti (June 2019) and Hannover (April 2020) / postponed to 2021 due to the pandemic
    Led by: Prof. Dr. Brigitte Reinwald
    Year: 2021
  • Aushandlung von Belonging und Citizenship unter Berücksichtigung sozialer Kategorisierungen
    BMBF, research grant
    Led by: Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Gabbert
    Year: 2014
    Duration: 2014-2016
  • Congress Reshaping (g)local Dynamics in the Caribbean. Relaciones y Desconexiones – Relations et Déconnections – Relations and Disconnections
    Who creates visions of the Caribbean and how are they produced? Who is trying to explore how the circulation and non-circulation of knowledge and culture has historically occurred in and about the Caribbean? These were some of the central questions of the conference. The international conference contributed to the understanding of the Caribbean by focusing on transatlantic and transoceanic circulations of knowledge. Its interdisciplinary approach created a space for dialogue and discussion about how the humanities, cultural studies, and social sciences can discuss these dynamics and how a critical, transcultural, and decolonial history of science can emerge.
    Led by: Prof. Dr. Anja Bandau
    Team: Natascha Ueckmann und Anne Brüske
    Year: 2015
    Funding: VWStiftung
  • Contingency & Contraction: Modernity, Temporality in the United States 1880-1920
    Led by: Prof. Dr. Ruth Mayer
    Year: 2018
    Funding: DFG
    Duration: 2018-2021
  • Cultural Heritage als Ressource? (CHER)
    Lower Saxony Ministry for Science and Culture, joint project
    Led by: Prof. Dr. Mathias Bös, PD Dr. Nina Clara Tiesler
    Year: 2016
  • Dealing with Violence – Resolving Conflicts in Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean
    International Conference
    Led by: Prof. Dr. Brigitte Reinwald, Prof. Dr. Christine Hatzky und Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Gabbert
    Year: 2022
    Funding: VolkswagenStiftung
    © College of Law and Governmance Studies Addis Ababa University
  • Ethnicity, Citizenship and Belonging and their interaction with other categories of difference
    research grant
    Led by: Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Gabbert
    Year: 2010
    Funding: BMBF
    Duration: 2010-2014
  • Global Interdependence? Newness and Tradition in the 21st Century
    International Conference
    Led by: Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Gabbert
    Year: 2005
    Funding: DFG
  • Handlungsstrategien ehemaliger Sklaven und Sklavinnen in Kuba und Martinique nach der Abschaffung der Sklaverei
    This project aims to examine the period after the abolition of slavery on the Caribbean islands of Cuba (1886) and Martinique (1848) with regard to the transition from slave labour to other forms of labour (forced labour, free wage labour, share cropping), the transformations of gender relations with regard to new divisions of labour, new forms of couple and family relationships, intra- and inter-ethnic conflicts as well as the political and cultural resistance of the former slaves against new bondage and racial discrimination as well as cultural paternalism by state and church authorities. | Sub-project of the joint project: "After Slavery - The Caribbean and Africa in Comparison
    Led by: PD Dr. Ulrike Schmieder
    Year: 2010
    Funding: DFG
    Duration: 2010-2014
  • Inclusive Citizenship
    The research centre Inclusive Citizenship is interested in the social constructions of citizenship and the processes of exclusion that accompany them. Based on the analysis of exclusion, interdisciplinary questions are asked about existing or aspired practices of inclusion.
    Led by: Bös, Mathias
    Year: 2020
    Duration: 2016-2020
  • PAESE - Provenance Research in Non-European Collection and Ethnography in Lower Saxony
    The PAESE joint research project is based on close cooperation between the universities of Hanover, Göttingen and Oldenburg and various museums in Lower Saxony (Hanover, Hildesheim, Göttingen, Braunschweig & Oldenburg). By jointly researching the non-European ethnological collections there with researchers and museum representatives from the different regions of origin (Namibia, Cameroon, Tanzania, Central Australia & Papua New Guinea), the project systematically contributes to the international transfer of knowledge between universities and museums.
    Led by: Prof. Dr. Reinwald
    Year: 2018
    Duration: 2018-2022
  • Post-Doc Projekt: Transatlantische Theorienetzwerke: Akteure, Texte und Strukturen im 20. Jahrhundert
    Led by: Dr. Mark Minnes
    Year: 2018
    Duration: 2018 - 2019
  • Serializing Mass Culture: Popular Film Serials and Serial Structures in the United States 1910-1940
    This subproject of the research project "Popular Seriality - Aesthetics and Practice" explores the historical foundations of popular seriality. It aims at reassessing the filmic material from the vantage point of seriality studies and, additionally, investigating this material's implications for a newly accentuated history of twentieth-century American mass culture.
    Led by: Prof. Dr. Ruth Mayer & Ilka Brasch
    Year: 2013
    Funding: DFG
    Duration: 2013 - 2016
  • Sprachnationalistische Bewegungen in der Romania
    Publication project
    Led by: Prof. Dr. Lidia Becker
    Year: 2016
  • Symposium In/Visibility and Opacity: Cultural Productions by African and African Diasporic Women
    Recent decades have seen intensifying xenophobia, growing anti-immigration rhetoric, and more and more blatant forms of neoliberal racism in many civic societies around the globe; as part of this development, we observe that especially in popular culture and the mass media, women of Global South communities are often depicted as passive victims. Gender issues are presented in ways that allow the West to offer women the opportunity to be rescued from their oppressing “exotic” cultures. Such representations of gendered cultural markers lead to our investigation in regard to the African-descended women and cultural productions. The symposium’s focus will be on African and African Diasporic women’s experiences, contributions, and cultural productions in reciprocal relationship.
    Led by: Prof. Dr. Anja Bandau
    Year: 2019
    Funding: VWStiftung
    Duration: 10. bis 12. Juli 2019
  • Tendencias actuales de simplificación lingüística en la América Latina entre la demanda de democratización y la creciente desigualdad
    CALAS-Fellowship
    Led by: Prof. Dr. Lidia Becker
    Year: 2020
    Duration: Dezember 2020 - April 2021

Ongoing Dissertation- and Postdoc-Projects

  • Afro-Costa Rican Foundational Literature: Approaching the Ignored Histories of Anglophone Production
    Supervision: Prof. Dr Anja Bandau, Romanic Seminar) and Prof. Dr. Jana Gohrisch (English Seminar)
    Led by: Karla Araya (Universidad de Costa Rica)
    Year: 2023
  • Criminal Landscapes: Imagining Wales in Contemporary Crime Narratives
    Supervision: Prof. Dr. Jana Gohrisch (English Seminar) and Prof. Dr. Ellen Grünkemeier (University of Bielefeld)
    Led by: Elena Ippendorf, M.A. (Englisches Seminar)
    Year: 2023
  • Diasporische Identitäten. Osmanische Migrant*innen in Argentinien zwischen Selbstorganisation und Integration
    Supervision: Prof. Dr. Christine Hatzky
    Led by: Ecem Temürtürkan, M.A. (Historisches Seminar)
    Year: 2022
  • Dissertationsprojekt: Fragmente kolonialen Sammelns. Erinnerungskulturen zur Kamerun-Sammlung von Kurt Strümpell (1872-1947) im Museum und der mündlichen Überlieferung
    Supervision: Prof. Dr. Brigitte Reinwald | joint project: Provenance Research in Non-European Collection and Ethnography in Lower Saxony - PAESE
    Led by: Isabella Bozsa, M.A. (Historisches Seminar)
    Year: 2023
    Funding: VolkswagenStiftung
  • Dissertationsprojekt: The Cuban Journal Diáspora(s) and Transatlantical Intellectual Networks
    Supervision: Prof. Dr. Anja Bandau
    Led by: Natascha Rempel, M.A. (Romanisches Seminar)
    Year: 2023
  • Erwerbsstrategien und Wissensproduktion von Objekten der kolonialen Kamerun-Sammlung des Landesmuseums Hannover
    Supervision: Prof. Dr. Brigitte Reinwald | joint project: Provenance Research in Non-European Collection and Ethnography in Lower Saxony - PAESE
    Led by: Bianca Baumann, M.A. (Historisches Seminar)
    Year: 2022
    Funding: VolkswagenStiftung
  • La circulación de las ideas feministas en América Central y su impacto en la región (1960-2000)
    Supervision: Prof. Dr. Christine Hatzky
    Led by: Alexia Ugalde Quesada
    Year: 2022
  • La influencia de las élites centroamericanas en las políticas fiscales y las desigualdades. Los casos de El Salvador, Costa Rica y Panamá, 2000-2019
    Supervision: Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Gabbert
    Led by: Esteban Arias, M.A. (Institut für Soziologie)
    Year: 2023
  • Miles and More: Quantitative Approaches to Mobility in the English Novel
    Supervision: Prof. Dr. Jana Gohrisch
    Led by: Janna-Lena Neumann, M.A. (Englisches Seminar)
    Year: 2016
  • The Representation of Horses in Anglophone Fiction 1950-2015
    Supervision: Prof. Dr. Jana Gohrisch
    Led by: Lena Rindermann, M.A. (Englisches Seminar)
    Year: 2023
  • Wuthering Waters: Maritime Working-Class Movements across the Atlantic, 1800-1900
    Supervision: Prof. Dr. Jana Gohrisch
    Led by: Hannah Pardey, Dr. des. (Englisches Seminar)
    Year: 2023
  • YouTube-Politainment aus Mexiko: Eine diskurslinguistische und glottopolitische Analyse des Kanals von Alfredo Matta
    Supervision: Prof. Dr. Lidia Becker
    Led by: Jan Salzbrunn, M.A. (Romanisches Seminar)
    Year: 2023
  • Zerbrochene Ketten und zerbrochene Träume: Christliche Mission und die Transformation der Unfreiheit in Suriname, 1863-1900
    Supervision: Prof. Dr. Christine Hatzky, PD Dr. Ulrike Schmieder
    Led by: Wolf Behnsen, M.A., Historisches Seminar
    Year: 2018
    Funding: Graduiertenakademie der LUH - Reisemittel

Completed Dissertation- and Postdoc-Projects

  • Dissertation: Breaking the Silence: South African Representations of HIV/AIDS
    Published as: „Breaking the silence: South African representations of HIV/AIDS“ (London, Currey 2013) | Supervision: Prof. Dr. Jana Gohrisch
    Led by: Dr. Ellen Grünkemeier (Englisches Seminar)
    Year: 2013
  • Dissertation: An Atlantic siglo de oro. Literature and Oceanic Movements in the early 17th century
    Published as: „Ein atlantisches Siglo de Oro: Literatur und ozeanische Bewegung im frühen 17. Jahrhundert“ (Berlin, Boston, de Gruyter 2017) | Supervision: Prof. Dr. Anja Bandau
    Led by: Dr. Mark Minnes (Romanisches Seminar)
    Year: 2017
  • Dissertation: Booming Solidarity. The Construction of Nicaragua’s Image by the West German Solidarity Movement and the FSLN (1979-1990)
    Published as: „Botschafter der Revolution: das transnationale Kommunikationsnetzwerk zwischen der Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional und der bundesdeutschen Nicaragua-Solidarität 1977-1990“ (Berlin, Boston: Oldenbourg/de Gruyter, 2018) | Supervision: Prof. Dr. Christine Hatzky, Prof. Dr. Gabriele Metzler (Humboldt Universität, Berlin)
    Led by: Dr. Christian Helm (Historisches Seminar)
    Year: 2020
  • Dissertation: Fachkräfte für die Entwicklung. Fortbildungskooperationen zwischen Ghana und den beiden deutschen Staaten, 1956-1976
    Supervision: Prof. Dr. Birthe Kundrus (Universität Hamburg), Prof. Dr. Brigitte Reinwald (Secondary supervision)
    Led by: Jana Otto, M.A. (Historisches Seminar)
    Year: 2020
  • Dissertation: Neo-Extractivism and Social Inequalities in Ecuador
    Published as: Der Neo-Extraktivismus und die Bürgerrevolution: Rohstoffwirtschaft und soziale Ungleichheiten in Ecuador“ (Wiesbaden, Springer 2019) | Supervision: Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Gabbert
    Led by: Dr. des. Sebastian Matthes (Institut für Soziologie)
    Year: 2019
  • Dissertation: Social Housing, Spatial Segregation and Territorial Stigmatization in Brazil: The Case of the Conjunto IAPI, Belo Horizonte, c. 1940 ˗ 1973
    Published as: „Apartments for workers: Social housing, socio-spatial segregation and stigmatization in urban Brazil“ (Baden-Baden, Nomos 2018) | Supervision: Prof. Dr. Christine Hatzky, Prof. Luciana Andrade (Universidade Católica de Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, Brasilien)
    Led by: Dr. Mario Peters (Historisches Seminar)
    Year: 2017
  • Dissertation: „Afrikanische Initiativen zur Abolition an der Goldküste, 1841-1897. Die Einstellung lokaler Akteure zu Sklaverei und Sklavenhandel“
    Published as: "From Slavery and Freedom. African Abolition Initiatives on the Gold Coast (1841-1897)“ (Frankfurt/Main: Campus 2019) Supervision: Prof. Dr. Brigitte Reinwald, Prof. Dr. Jan-Georg Deutsch (†) (Universität Oxford)
    Led by: Dr. Steffen Runkel (Historisches Seminar)
    Year: 2019
    Funding: DFG (Verbundprojekt „Nach der Sklaverei. Die Karibik und Afrika im Vergleich“)
  • Dissertation: „Die Familie als (anti-)koloniale Metonymie: Jamaika und Südafrika in der ersten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts. (The Family as Anti-Colonial Metonymy: Jamaica and South Africa in the First Half of the Twentieth Century)“
    Supervision: Prof. Dr. Jana Gohrisch
    Led by: Henning Marquardt (Englisches Seminar)
    Year: 2014
  • Dissertation: „Indigene Autonomie in Lateinamerika: Zur Verstaatlichung indigener Selbstverwaltung in Bolivien“
    Supervision: Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Gabbert
    Led by: Dr. des. Michael Fackler (Institut für Soziologie)
    Year: 2018
  • Dissertation: „Traditions can be changed: Tanzanian nationalist debates around decolonizing ‘race’ and gender, 1960s-1970s”
    Supervision: Prof. Dr. Brigitte Reinwald, Prof. Dr. Mathias Bös
    Led by: Dr. des. Harald Barre (Historisches Seminar)
    Year: 2020
  • Grenzenlose Schwesternschaft? Die bundesdeutsche Nicaragua-Solidaritätsbewegung aus geschlechtergeschichtlicher Perspektive, 1977-1992
    Supervision: Prof. Dr. Christine Hatzky, PD Dr. Hinnerk Onken, Universität Münster
    Led by: Friederike Apelt, M.A. (Historisches Seminar)
    Year: 2022
    Funding: DFG-Sachmittelbeihilfe
  • Habilitation: Appropriations of Time and Space in Industrial Capitalist England. Historical Cultural Studies in Practice
    Supervision: Prof. Dr. Jana Gohrisch
    Led by: Dr. Ellen Grünkemeier (Englisch Seminar)
    Year: 2020
  • Middlebrow 2.0 and the Digital Affect: Studying Postcolonial Readers in the Internet Era
    Supervision: Prof. Dr. Jana Gohrisch)
    Led by: Hannah Pardey
    Year: 2019
  • Political Activities of Evangelicals in Latin America
    Led by: Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Gabbert
    Team: Lukas Nestvogel, M.A.
    Year: 2022
  • Territorio, Autonomía y Autodeterminación de las comunidades Mapuche. Una visión desde la palabra, la práctica y la legalidad
    Supervision: Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Gabbert
    Led by: Javier Lastra Bravo
    Year: 2020
  • „Disparate Zukunftsvorstellungen. Kolonialbewegte Jugend zwischen der Weimarer Republik und dem Mandatsgebiet Südwestafrika“
    Published as: „Kolonial bewegte Jugend. Beziehungsgeschichten zwischen Deutschland und Südwestafrika zur Zeit der Weimarer Republik“ (Bielefeld: transcript 2019) | Supervision: Prof. Dr. Brigitte Reinwald, Prof. Dr. Kirsten Rüther (Universität Wien)
    Led by: Dr. Susanne Heyn (Historisches Seminar)
    Year: 2019