The dates for this year's consultations are:
Register at:
https://terminplaner6.dfn.de/de/p/706c856327f636f366cec99d8d036109-1200018
Individual consultation appointments can also be arranged by emailing public-history@rub.de.
The office hours take place at the times given below. If required, please book a time slot under the given link:
https://terminplaner6.dfn.de/p/fe6a7f9dc03adfa3bb9abefcbeb84d7d-35431
https://terminplaner6.dfn.de/p/d0927df1deab121d367849e6b9d16d37-33071
On 13 May 2025, Elena Lewers will give a guest lecture at the University of Duisburg-Essen on the topic Educational revolution through virtual reality? Historical didactic perspectives on VR as a learning space. The lecture will ask what characterises VR as a learning space and how it can be used for teaching-learning contexts. The event will also include an interactive part where you will have the opportunity to try out VR yourself.
You can find further information in this flyer.
Please send your registration to: make3D@uni-due.de
Workshop for lecturers on 1 February 2025, 10:30 am to 2 pm, Ruhr University Bochum
Lecturers: Dr Stefan Zeppenfeld, Prof Dr Christian Bunnenberg from the joint project ‘Cultures of Compromise’
Compromise is on everyone's lips. The search for compromises in seemingly hopeless conflict situations in politics and diplomacy dominates the news of our time. The interdisciplinary research network ‘Cultures of Compromise’ explores the role and relevance of compromise from the perspective of different disciplines such as history, political science, sociology, law and communication studies. To mark the end of the research project, which is jointly funded by Ruhr-Universität Bochum, the University of Münster and the University of Duisburg-Essen and by the Ministry of Culture and Science of North Rhine-Westphalia, Prof Dr Christian Bunnenberg's Department of Didactics of History and Public History invites you to an open closing event.
In an open workshop format, we want to enter into dialogue with teachers from schools and other educational institutions and co-creatively discuss sources, methods and possible guiding questions for the diverse range of topics related to ‘compromise’ in history lessons. The aim of the event is to gain innovative impulses for contemporary work with pupils, for research and for its didactic support and implementation from the joint considerations.
After a subject-specific and historical-didactic introduction, we will dedicate ourselves to studying sources in small groups and discuss the potential and limits of a term that is omnipresent in contemporary history lessons.
Participation in the event is free of charge. Teachers of history and all related subjects as well as interested educators are very welcome! Please send your registration, stating your subject profile, to stefan.zeppenfeld@rub.de
The information at a glance:
Workshop ‘Compromises of the past in history lessons. Sources, methods, key questions’
Saturday, 1 February
10:30 am to 2 pm
Ruhr University Bochum
University Road 150
44801 Bochum
Registration: stefan.zeppenfeld@rub.de
The Campus-StAge blog, which emerged from the project Forschendes Lernen mit Oral History in der Geschichtswissenschaft (FLOH), is intended to provide a platform for student work related to history. The idea behind it is to publicise the diversity of historical research and to provide a platform for painstakingly produced theses and projects so that they are not forgotten. The blog is managed by Jana Lena Jünger and Elena Lewers, who both work on the FLOH project. You can read more here.
On the occasion of the Day of Remembrance of the Victims of the Holocaust on 27 January 2025, Mia Berg was interviewed by Deutschlandunk Kultur on the podcast Kompressor about National Socialist history and the Holocaust in social media. The interview is available online here.
From 28-29 November, the University of Siegen is hosting the conference ‘Doing City. Der Stadt-Raum als soziale Konstruktion in der Moderne’. Stefan Zeppenfeld will also be taking part with his lecture entitled ‘Der Flohmarkt. Ein urbanes Ereignis und seine lokalen Lesarten’.
On November 14 and 15, the workshop “Fake History? Uncertain (re)constructions of the past on social media" is taking place in Marburg. Scholars, media professionals, content creators and other experts will discuss the various forms, challenges and dangers of digital “fake history”. Together with Andrea Lorenz and Kristin Oswald (University of Hamburg), Mia Berg will give an insight into the findings of the SocialMediaHistory project in the lecture “”people whose only source is tiktok: 😨 “ History-related negotiation and appropriation processes on Instagram and TikTok”.
Click here for the flyer with the entire program.
The workshop organised by the University of Marburg entitled ‘Fake History? Uncertain (re)constructions of the past on social media’, organised by the University of Marburg, deals with the unscientific presentation of supposedly historical content on social media platforms. The organisers would like to engage in a professional exchange with academics, media professionals, content creators and other experts.
On the second day of the workshop, 15 November, Mia Berg will be joined by her colleagues Andrea Lorenz and Kristin Oswald from the #SocialMediaHistory team. They will give a presentation on ‘people whose only source is tiktok:’ - History-related negotiation and appropriation processes on Instagram and TikTok in the VI panel on ‘Digital History Cultures’. They will also take part in a ‘live experiment’ entitled ‘Sehe ich was, das du nicht siehst? Algorithmisation of history in social media’.
Registration is required and is possible until 3 November by e-mail to sfbevent@uni-marburg.de. You can find the flyer for the full programme here.
On 9 October, the Federal Foundation for the Reappraisal of the SED Dictatorship and the Deutsche Gesellschaft e.V. are organising a conference entitled ‘1989 - Mit der Revolution in die Zukunft’. The event includes a panel discussion on the topic ‘1989 interkulturell: (Post-)Migrantische Perspektiven auf die Friedliche Revolution’, in which experts from various disciplines, including Stefan Zeppenfeld, will participate.
The conference will take place in person, but will be broadcast live on the YouToube channel of the Federal Foundation for the Reappraisal of the SED Dictatorship. Participation in the event is free of charge, but registration is requested by 7 October 2024 by e-mail to heike.tuchscheerer@deutsche-gesellschaft-ev.de. You can view the programme flyer here and obtain further information here.
On 8 October this year, the Bergzabern Republic will be presented with the ‘Place of Rhineland-Palatinate's History of Democracy’ award by the Rhineland-Palatinate state parliament. The event will include a panel discussion on the topic of ‘Communicating (democratic) history’, at which Mia Berg will be present.
Participation is free of charge, but requires prior registration. You can register here. You can find a flyer for the event here.
At this year's second Treffpunkt Geschichtsunterricht in Greifswald on 25 September, teachers can choose from one of four workshops as part of the training programme. One of the four workshops will be held by Elena Lewers on the topic of ‘History to relive? The challenges and potential of virtual reality in history lessons’. Christian Bunnenberg will also be taking part with his keynote speech ‘Will everything remain different? Perspectives for history lessons in the age of digital transformation’.
Detailed information on the day's programme and the opportunity to register for the limited places can be found here.
On 19 and 20 September, a conference will be held at the Hessian State Archives in Marburg on the topic of ‘Abgrenzungen, Verflechtungen, Aufbruch? Neue Perspektiven auf Migration und Einwanderungsgesellschaft in Geschichtswissenschaft und Public History’. On the second day of the conference, Stefan Zeppenfeld will enrich the programme with his lecture ‘Kicken, Kämpfe, Kompromisse. Migrantische Fußballvereine als Perspektive der Citizen Science und Public History'.
The flyer with the complete conference programme can be found here.
At this year's bi-annual meeting of the Conference for History Didactics (KGD) from 18-20 September in Mainz, innovative approaches and challenges of history didactics, which is currently undergoing change, will be discussed. The first section deals with questions on ‘Virtual Reality applications as (a) future of historical learning?’. In this thematic block, Elena Lewers will give a lecture entitled ‘Virtual Reality as an experiential space of history - theoretical and empirical perspectives’.
The anthology Geschichtskulturen im digitalen Wandel, recently published by Wochenschau Verlag and edited by Olaf Hartung, Alexandra Krebs and Johannes Meyer-Hamme, is enriched by contributions from Mia Berg and Elena Lewers, among others. The essays in the volume deal with current issues relating to historical culture and digital change.
Mia Berg, together with Andrea Lorenz, contributes an article entitled #BigDataHistory. Forschungspragmatische Überlegungen zu Geschichte in sozialen Medien. Elena Lewers dedicates her essay to the topic "So n bisschen als wenn man vor Ort wäre" Empirische Annäherung an Virtual Reality als Erfahrungsraum für Geschichte.
The volume is available here.
The seventh year Public History students have published a podcast about the first luxury cruise of the Augusta Viktoria in 1894: "Mit Champagner auf (Nor)Wegen" can be found on Spotify.
The students invite listeners to travel exactly 130 years into the past, to the year 1894, when the ship "Augusta Viktoria" travelled to Norway for the first time as a cruise ship. These were the beginnings of a travel model that still exists today. In the podcast, listeners find out why cruises came into being at this particular time, who travelled on the Augusta Viktoria and which people below the surface were responsible for the smooth running of the cruise. It also looks at which stops were made on the journey, what happened on the ship, what was eaten and drunk - spoiler: including champagne - and much more.
The information is based on an intensive study of sources and literature and is presented in very different ways, to create a lively listening experience.
In June 2024, WDR5 Scala published a feature on classical cultural mediation, especially on Instagram and TikTok. In addition to the creators Klaus Willbrand and Susanne Siegert, Mia Berg also enriched the feature with insights into the research perspective and experiences as part of the SocialMediaHistory project. The feature sheds light on how social media contributes to the dissemination and communication of cultural content and what role it plays in today's society.
The feature compiled by Laura Dresch can be listened to here until 26 June 2025: https://www1.wdr.de/mediathek/audio/wdr5/wdr5-scala-hintergrund/klassische-kulturvermittlung-bei-instagram-und-co-100.html
On 9 March 2024, the RUB Teachers Day was successfully held for the fourth time on the Ruhr University campus. As part of this event, staff from the Chair of Didactics and Public History offered various training courses. Professor Dr. Christian Bunnenberg gave a workshop on the Federal President's History Competition, Elena Lewers lectured on history in virtual reality, Mia Berg discussed history on social media and Stefan Zeppenfeld offered a training course on the topic of cultures of compromise in history lessons. All four speakers were very pleased with the demand and active participation of the colleagues from the schools. The complete programme of the 4th RUB Teachers Day can be found here.
At the 54th German Historians' Conference, which took place in Leipzig in September 2023 under the motto "Fragile Facts", Kirsten Pörschke (Körber Foundation) and Prof. Saskia Handro (University of Münster) organised the panel "More than a fact check! Historical research by students as historical-cultural capital". Based on the Federal President's History Competition, which is organised by the Körber Foundation, the panel discussed the social function and potential of historical research by school students in times of 'fragile facts'. The constributions are documented in the current LAG magazine (3/2024) from 20 March 2024 - including an article by Prof. Dr. Christian Bunnenberg on the present and future of the history competition in a culture of digitality: https://lernen-aus-der-geschichte.de/Lernen-und-Lehren/content/15671.
On 9 and 10 November 2023, this workshop will be all about virtual storytelling. Along the central themes of text, experience and knowledge, the workshop will focus on narrative process in order to examine the fabrication of narrated worlds on the one hand and to discuss their status as virtual lifeworlds and differences to possible or fictional wolrds on the other. Elena Lewers will also make a contribution to this in the first panel on Friday, 10 November. The workshop was organised by the sub-area B02 "Virtual Middle Ages" as well as the entire B-area and D02 of the SFB 1567 and will take place in the event centre, conference room IV at the RUB.
The detailed programme and further information can be found here.
In this workshop medievalists, digitisation experts, museum professionals, didactic specialists, and librarians convene to explore digital and virtual developments in discourse about the Middle Ages. The workshop will be held on 24 october 2023 and the experts will provide video presenations beforehand. During the day of the workshop, they discuss both the practical implementation and theoretical discourse, aiming to redefine digital medievalism and reconsider how knowledge about the Middle Ages is created, formed, and communicated.
To join the workshop online, please register here. For further information and the program of the day click here.
In August 2023, the anthology @ichbinsophiescholl. Darstellung und Diskussion von Geschichte in Social Media was published by the Wallstein Verlag. The title is edited by Mia Berg and Christian Kuchler and is part of the series Historical Education and Public History, vol. 1.
You can find the book here.
On 25 August 2023, Stefan Zeppenfeld was a guest on the Deutschlandfunk Nova podcast Ab21. As a historian, he conducts interviews with contemporary witnesses, among others, and was thus able to enrich the episode "Lebensgeschichte(n). Wie wir mit unseren Großeltern connecten" with his expertise on the exchange between generations.
You can listen to the episode here.
On 4 and 5 July 2023, you will have the opportunity to follow exciting contirbutions on the topic of history in VR at a joint conference of RWTH Aachen University and RUB.
The event will take place in Aachen and is free of charge. However, pre-registration is requested at: andrea.hopf@ipw.rwth-aachen.de
For further informatin and the event programme, please see the flyer.
In the 12th episode of the University of Hamburg's science communication podcast, which was released on 25 May 2023, Mia Berg and Kristin Oswald (Hamburg) talk about their joint project "SocialMediaHistory" and how citizen participation was planned from the very beginning.
You can listen to the podcast here.
Together with the Department of History at the Ludwigsburg University of Education, an excursion will take place from 28.08.2023 to 01.09.2023 to the former battlefield of Woerth (in Alsace), where one of the central battles of the Franco-Prussian War was fought on 06.08.1870. The five day excursion is offered as part of the history didactic in-depth seminar.
As there are only limited places (10), please register at christian.bunnenberg@ruhr-uni-bochum.de. Registration is open now.
For further information (accommodation, price etc.) please see the attached PDF file.
The HZ published a review of the volume "Geschichte auf YouTube" (History on YouTube) edited by Nils Steffen and Christian Bunnenberg. The volume has also been available as an affordable paperback version since 2021. You can find the review as a PDF file here.
Social media such as Instagram or TikTok have become popular platforms for presenting history in multimedia forms. As part of the #SocialMediaHistory project, Prof. Dr. Christian Bunnenberg and his team are investigating the extent to which historical representations on such platforms are preceived by users, to what extent they are distorted or which topics are not even addressed. A detailed interview on this topic between Prof. Dr. Christian Bunnenberg and detektor.fm editor Julia Seegers can now be heard here in the podcast.
For years, the tourism industry has known only one thing when it comes to cruises: increasing numbers: more ships, more passengers and more destinations. In the current episode 088 of the podcasst "Anno Punkt Punkt Punkt", Philipp Janssen talks to Christian Bunnenberg about his field of research: the beginnings of cruise tourism in the late 19th century. You can listen to the episode here.
On 11 and 12 November 2022, the international conference on "#History on Social Media - Sources, Methods, Ethics" will take place as part of the joint project #SocialMediaHistory of the Universities of Hamburg and Bochum. The conference will take place online and participation is free of charge. Registration is still possible until 09.11.2022 via this form. For further information on the programm follow this link.
In the blog interview entitled "Close up, but no time travel! Doing Public History and immersive media", Christian Bunnenberg explains not only the theoretical background of public history, but also the practical possibilities of actively communicating history. He also discusses the importance of immersive media and their potential. Finally, Christian Bunnenberg provides information on the methods used to examine "doing history". The detailed interview can be found on the science blog "doing | public | history" under the following link: https://doingph.hypotheses.org/890
The DFG is funding the exploratory research area "Virtual Living Environments". The Department of Didactics of History and Public History, headed by Christian Bunnenberg, is participating in the joint project with a sub-project. Further information will be available shortly on the project homepage or already in the DFG press release under the following link: https://www.dfg.de/service/presse/pressemitteilungen/2022/pressemitteilung_nr_16/index.html
For the third time, the prize money from the 5x5000€ competition will go to a teaching project of the Institute of History! Elena Lewers won the 29th round of the competition with the project "(Virtual) on site. Virtual Reality at Memorials and in Teaching" and thus secured the support of 5000€ for her project. The practical exercise takes place in cooperation with Christian Günther from the Bergische Universität Wuppertal and the NS Documentation Centre Cologne. In the seminar, the students gain practical experience with VR applications in memorial sites, which they are to implement themselves in a project-oriented phase by creating their own VR application. You can find more information about the content in the RUB eLearning Portal under the following link: 5x5000 – Gewinner und Gewinnerinnen der 29. Runde | RUBeL
In the project "Social Media History" Christian Bunnenberg, Thorsten Logge and Nils Steffen are researching, together with citizens, how history works on TikTok and Instagram, who the actors are and what methods are important in the process. In an interview with Sabrina Schröder from the portal "wissenschaftskommunikation.de", Christian Bunnenberg explains, among other things, the goal and the detailed process of the project. You can read the whole interview at: „Partizipative Projekte sind keine gängige Methode der Geschichtswissenschaft“ – Wissenschaftskommunikation.de
In the eighth episode of the podcast "Professional School of Education", which reports on teacher training at the Ruhr-University Bochum, Matthias Kostrzewa (PSE's digitalisation officer) welcomes Christian Bunnenberg and Elena Lewers for an interview. The topics include how the past can be made "tangible" for future generations and what constitutes appropriate didactic processing. The focus is on AR and VR offerings. The interview is available in full length under the following link: insidePSE: Virtuelle Realitäten im Geschichtsunterricht | Professional School of Education (rub.de)
Christian Bunnenberg reports on the chances and possibilities of immersive history, including in history lessons, in an interview with Jasmin Nimmrich and Theresa Kühnert (werkstatt.bdp.de). What limits are set and how such applications should be handled afterwards is explained in detail in the interview. The article can be found on the website of the Federal Agency for Civic Education: https://www.bpb.de/lernen/digitale-bildung/werkstatt/505406/geschichte-in-360-grad-erleben/
In the February 18, 2022 ZDF Magazin Royale program, Jan Böhmermann took a critical look at the Instagram account @ichbinsophiescholl under the title "Gut gemeint, schlecht umgesetzt: Das Problem mit deutscher Erinnerungskultur" ["Well-meant, poorly implemented: The Problem with German Culture of Remenbrance"], he critically examined the Instagram account @ichbinsophiescholl. Christian Bunnenberg was also represented with a short statement. The link to the show: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rx8HZ0rnRxA
The project "Mining in the Recklinghausen District - Model Project for Cooperation between Schools and Municipal Archives" was successfully completed. The teaching material "Aufbruch im nördlichen Ruhrgebiet 1870 bis 1914" can be downloaded from https://url.nrw/BiPa_Archivheft. Requests for the printed version can be sent to info@bildungspartner.nrw. There you can also receive the following publication:
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Last update: Apr 24, 2025
