History takes place - also and especially in social media! Public History Hamburg, the history education at the Ruhr University Bochum and Kulturpixel e. V. are exploring together with citizens how history is told on Instagram and TikTok. The project explores forms of visual and participatory historiography on the internet. Together, they will develop analytical tools and test their own practices of representation. The aim is to enable and promote multi-perspective and fact-based historical narratives and a critical and reflexive participation in historical discourses in social media.
Research project in cooperation with the Public History Department at the University Hamburg.
Project website: www.socialmediahistory.de
See here for the latest information on events and publications.
Instagram Channel: @socmedhistory
Project partners #SocialMediaHistory
Ruhr-Universität Bochum
Universität Hamburg
Kulturpixel e.V.
Funded by: BMBF
Duration: 2021-2024
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An overview of the publications from the project team can be found here.
In order to make past events "tangible" and "vivid" for future generations, memorial sites are increasingly turning to digital services that are intended to provide a more direct access, for example, to the dictatorship experiences of National Socialism and the GDR. Besides the technical development of the offers, however, didactic elements that could allow a distancing from the presented content as well as a reflection of the offer were neglected. Empirical studies will investigate to what extent VR applications and the reflection of such applications can contribute to the development of competences for critical and reflected participation in historical culture.
The subproject "Historical-didactic processing" deals with the historical classification and historical-didactic analysis of the history-related VR offers that were selected for the empirical studies. It aims to develop materials to support the "emersion" from the virtual world and to identify quality criteria for the production of VR applications for historical-political education.
Editor / Supervisor: Elena Lewers M.A./M.Ed. / Prof. Dr. Christian Bunnenberg
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Funded by: BMBF
Duration: 2020-2023
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The research project "DiAL:OGe – Digitalisierung in der Ausbildung von Lehramtsstudierenden: Orientierung und Gestaltung ermöglichen" started on 01.03.2020 at the Professional School of Education (PSE) of the Ruhr-Universität. The project aims to strengthen and permanently establish digitisation processes in the teacher training at universities. In a cooperation of didacticians and educational scientists, central challenges of digitisation are explored in five "dialogue rooms". Challenges include the modification of curricula, the use of explanatory videos, the potential of virtual reality, questions of democratisation and digital literacy. The transfer between science and practice takes place in the "Innovation Field Lab" using various formats.
The dialogue room #Extended Realities aims to analyse existing Virtual and Augmented Reality offers from a subject-specific, didactic and general media-didactic perspective, to develop and test criteria for the use in teaching contexts and to test their transferability to other subjects. The project focuses on the subjects sports, geography and history.
Editor / Supervisor: Nicola Przybylka M.A. / Prof. Dr. Christian Bunnenberg
Project website: http://www.pse.rub.de/dialoge/index.php
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Funded by: BMBF
Duration: 2020-2023
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The project "Kriegsgezwitscher” aims to (re)tell the story of the Franco-German War of 1870/71 on the Twitter account @Krieg7071.In a so-called "Reentweetment" the events are told from different perspectives in real time, accurate to the day, the hour or ideally the minute - only 150 years later. The followers of the Twitter account will thus be able to gain insights into the war and the experiences and perceptions of the contemporaries. At the same time, the possibilities of chronological presentation on Twitter are being used in order to make the war, with its turbulent and dense series of events as well as uneventful periods, comprehensible in its temporal dimension.
The tweets on the Twitter account @Krieg7071 are based on contemporary sources from people involved and other texts that allow contextualisation. The project is realised by Prof. Dr. Tobias Arand (PH Ludwigsburg), Prof. Dr. Christian Bunnenberg and students from Ludwigsburg and Bochum.
Cooperation partner: Prof. Dr. Tobias Arand (PH Ludwigsburg)
Duration: 2020-2021
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Since 2014, the History of the Ruhr Foundation (SGR) and the German Mining Museum Bochum (DBM) have been running the Oral History Project "Digitaler Gedächtnisspeicher: Menschen im Bergbau" (www.menschen-im-bergbau.de) to preserve the memories of those who shaped the mining industry in the decades between the end of the Second World War and its final closure in 2018. In the second phase of the project, starting in 2019, the collected stories will be analysed under different disciplinary and didactic aspects.
The Assistant Professor for History Education is responsible for the didactic sub-project A “Digitales Lernen: Theorie und Praxis“ [Digital Learning: Theory and Practice] . In this project, digital teaching materials and concepts for the video platform "People in Mining" are developed and put into practice (Editor: Theresa Hiller).
The aim of the didactic sub-project B "Digitales Lernen: Effekte auf das historische Lernen” [Digital learning: Effects on historical learning] is the empirical examination of the learning effectiveness of the teaching materials and concepts created. This project is supervised by the Chair for History Didactics (Prof. Dr. Nicola Brauch) (Editor: Marcel Mierwald).
Project website: https://www.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/mibdidaktik/index.html.de
Project partner: Stiftung Geschichte des Ruhrgebiets, Deutsches Bergbaumuseum Bochum
Funded by: Stiftung Geschichte des Ruhrgebietes, Stiftung Ruhrkohle AG
Duration: 2019-2022
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Frank Becker described Karl Klein's "Fröschweiler Chronik" as the "undisputed" bestseller of war memoirs of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870/71 in his habilitation thesis on the history of the wars of unification in Germany's bourgeois public sphere between 1864 and 1913. The Alsatian's text also receives classifications as a critical and tendentially pacifist account (Arand 2008) or as the most important German "anti-war book" from a Christian spirit in the imperial era (Führ 1995). In a joint project by Prof. Dr. Tobias Arand (Ludwigsburg) and Prof. Dr. Christian Bunnenberg, a new edition with commentary, biographical and historical introduction as well as supplementary sources is being realised together with Osburg Verlag (Hamburg) (publisher). The preview of the Osburg Verlag for spring 2021 can be found here. The matching excerpt of the Fröschweiler Chronicle can be found here.
Project partner: Prof. Dr. Tobias Arand (PH Ludwigsburg)
Duration: 2020-2021
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The project explores how the archival-pedagogical learning opportunities of the smaller, municipal archives in NRW can be extended for school-based learning groups. Therefore a working group with members from the “Bildungspartner NRW - Archiv und Schule”, the “LWL-Archivamt”, the “ZfSL Recklinghausen”, municipal archives of the Recklinghausen district, teachers and the Assistant Professor for History Education has been formed. The basic assumption behind the project is that the mentioned archives do not have enough temporal and material resources and that there are uncertainties regarding the pedagogical-didactical prerequisites and needs of the learning groups. It was considered useful to network several municipal archives in order to develop supporting measures. The result of the model project will be a learning aid for pupils at schools in the district of Recklinghausen (available in print and/or online), which presents the industrial development of the region in the years 1870-1912 on the basis of exemplary archival material as well as the cooperation of school learning groups with municipal archives. As part of the project, the Junior Professorship develops didactic suggestions for the use of the learning material in class.
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.
Project partner: Bildungspartner NRW (Archiv und Schule), LWL-Archivamt für Westfalen
Duration: 2019-2021
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The core of the project is to adapt an existing self-study course (Moodle), designed to introduce methods of qualitative social research, to the requirements of the new Master's programme in "Public History". The course was developed, used and evaluated by the educational sciences at RUB as part of the project "ABC – Abseits des Curriculums" (funded by the university programme "Forschendes Lernen"). The project thus involves a transfer from educational science to history and from the Bachelor's to the Master's level. The course is an interactive and action-oriented introduction to methods of empirical-qualitative social research. The examination of the course content enables students to choose their own research question and to work on it empirically on a small scale (e.g. by developing an interview guide and conducting, transcribing and reflecting on an interview). Students of the Master's programme in "Public History" are potentially employed in professional fields (e.g. museums) where basic knowledge in qualitative social research is increasingly required (e.g. visitor and recipient research). Therefore, an interdisciplinary approach will be used to transfer knowledge from the field of educational science to historical science and its special requirements.
Project partner: Prof. Dr. Sandra Aßmann, Institute for Educational Science, Ruhr Universität Bochum
Funded by: University Programme "Forschendes Lernen" at RUB
Duration: 2018-2019
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Since 2005, the video portal YouTube has been part of a constantly changing media landscape. In contrast to other online offers such as media libraries, streaming services and video-on-demand providers, YouTube offers its users to be both consumers and producers of the uploaded videos. This also created new approaches and formats for dealing with the past and history. In addition to uploaded TV documentaries and historical film documents, especially the so-called explanatory and learning videos enjoy great popularity among viewers. YouTube channels such as "The Great War" or "Einfach Geschichte" as well as the YouTuber "MrWissen2go" have their own formats for presenting history. Classic media gate keepers and agenda setters such as journalists and historians are thus faced with successful competitors - reason enough to deal with the phenomenon "History on YouTube" from a scientific, history-didactic and pragmatic perspective. "Geschichte auf YouTube. Neue Herausforderungen für Geschichtsvermittlung und historische Bildung" will be published by De Gruyter Oldenbourg in March 2019 and contains contributions from the perspectives of historical science, history education and YouTube practice.
The volume marks the beginning of the news book series "Medien der Geschichte", edited by Hamburg professors Thorsten Logge (Public History), Andreas Körber (History Didactics) and Thomas Weber (Media Studies).
Link to the publication
Project partner: Nils Steffen, anders & wissen - das projektlabor
Duration: 2017-2018
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At the end of 2017 the Stadtmuseum Stuttgart, which is currently under construction, will be opened. In addition to tried and tested forms of exhibition design, the museum also uses the method of digital storytelling in the conception of the permanent exhibition. The project accompanies this process in an advisory and empirical manner. It focuses on an analysis of the historical narratives created by the digital storytelling of Stuttgart citizens. The project examines the production process (including producers), the products and the reception.
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Duration: 2016 - 2018
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Last update: Mar 14, 2025
