A Year of History of Knowledge Events at the GHI

Little more than a year has passed since Simone Lässig added the history of knowledge as a research focus at the GHI. In this short time, the institute has hosted or been otherwise involved in a number of events related to this field. We have gathered them in one list as a kind of year-end stocktaking.

• Wissen auf der Flucht: Deutsche Akademikerinnen und Akademiker im Ausland, 1933-45, conference at the American Academy in Berlin, December 17, 2015.
• Die Welt der Kinder: Weltwissen und Weltdeutung in Schul- und Kinderbüchern des 19. und frühen 20. Jahrhunderts, conference at the University of Zurich, February 4–6, 2016
• Measuring Risk and Human Needs: New Perspectives from the History of Knowledge, lecture series at the GHI, spring 2016
• Uncertainty and Risk in America: (Un)Stable Histories from the Late Colonial Period to the “Gilded Age”, conference at the John F. Kennedy Institute, Free University of Berlin, June 30-July 2, 2016
• Cultural Mobility and Knowledge Formation in the Americas, conference at the Amerikahaus, Munich, June 30–July 2, 2016
• Migration and Knowledge Panel Series, at the annual GSA conference, San Diego, September 30, 2016
• Creating Spatial Historical Knowledge: New Approaches, Opportunities, and Epistemological Implications of Mapping History Digitally, workshops and conference at the GHI, October 20–22, 2016, with keynote lecture
• A Joint Past for Europe’s Future: National Memory, Bilateral Reconciliation and the German-Polish Textbook Initiative, panel discussion at the GHI, November 3, 2016
• Restricting Knowledge: Channeling Security Information in Recent History, December 8–9, 2016, in Washington, DC, at the GHI and the Wilson Center, with keynote lecture.

Looking at the breadth of institutions and scholars involved in these events, it seems clear that the integrative potential of the history of knowledge that Simone Lässig finds so attractive is already becoming manifest.