Institute for Economic and Social History

Current research

Prof. Dr. Hartmut Berghoff

  • Family firms in Germany and the United States since industrialization
  • History of white-collar crime
  • Anthology (in progress), together with Biess, Frank and Strasser, Ulrike (eds.), Germans and Pacific Worlds: From the Early Modern Era to World War I, Oxford and New York (Berghahn Publishers).
  • Anthology (in progress), together with Rischbieter, Laura (eds.) Living on Easy Credit? Public Debt and Financialization in the Western World after 1945, New York/Cambridge (Palgrave Macmillan).
  • Anthology (forthcoming), together with Jan Logemann and Felix Römer (eds.), The Consumer on the Home Front: World War II Civilian Consumption in Comparative Perspective (Studies of the German Historical Institute London), Oxford (Oxford University Press) 2016.
  • Article (forthcoming): Consumption on the Home Front during the Second World War. A Transnational Perspective, in: Hartmut Berghoff, Jan Logemann and Felix Römer (eds.), The Consumer on the Home Front: World War II Civilian Consumption in Comparative Perspective, Oxford 2016.
  • Project: Immigrant Entrepreneurship


Dr. Robert Bernsee

  • Second Book Project: Creativity in Predigitalia. An Economic and Cultural History of Copyright in Trans-Atlantic Perspective, c. 1950-1980.
  • Forthcoming book: Moralische Erneuerung. Korruption und bürokratische Reformen in Bayern und Preußen, 1780-1820, (Veröffentlichungen des Instituts für Europäische Geschichte, Abteilung für Universalgeschichte) Göttingen.
  • Book in progress: Moderne Patronage. Formen und Legitimationen personaler Verflechtung im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (zusammen mit Jens Ivo Engels, Volkhard Huth und Volker Köhler).
  • Article in progress: Whistleblowing in der Aufklärung? Radikale Korrespondenznetzwerke Deutschlands und Großbritanniens um 1800 im Vergleich.
  • Article in progress: For the Good of the Prince: Government and Corruption in Germany during the Long 18th Century.
  • Article in progress: Korruption als historisches Phänomen, in: Peter Graeff/Sebastian Wolf (Hrsg.): Korruption und Korruptionsbekämpfung ? Die Vermittlung in Lehre, Unterricht und Weiterbildung, Heidelberg/New York 2017 (in Vorbereitung).
  • Research project: Copyright in PräDigitalien. Kultur- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte des Urheberrechts in transatlantischer Perspektiver, 1945-1990


Dr. Alexander Engel

  • Book in progress: The birth of the risk economy: a history of futures trading [in German]
  • Participation in the SNF research project: "Markets on paper: information, dara and news in the Basel 'Avisblatt', 1729-1845"
  • Joint book in progress: Promises of the markets: new perspectives on the history of early modern economic culture [in German]
  • Article in progress: What is the Chicago Board of Trade? Changing perceptions of a capitalist institution, 1848-1948
  • Chapters in progress: for "Oxford Handbook of Hedge Funds", "Oxford Handbook of Commodity History", Handbook on "Konsum und Wirtschaft" (De Gruyter)


Jan Logemann, Ph.D.

  • Workshop: 'Consumer Engineering' - Mid-Century Mass Consumption between Planning Euphoria and the Limits of Growth, 1930s-1970s' (in cooperation with Ingo Köhler und Gary Cross), Göttingen März 2015 Mehr...
  • Research Project (Habilitation): European Imports? Émigrés and the Transformation of American Consumer Culture from the 1920s to the 1960s
  • Article in progress "Down and Out Downtown? Transatlantische Unteschiede in der Entwicklung urbaner Einkaufsräume, 1945-2010 in Michael Prinz (ed.). Die vielen Gesichter des Konsums 1850-2000 (Projected 2015)"
  • Article in progress "From Wartime Research to Post-War Affluence: European Émigrés and the Engeneering of American Wartime Consumption, in The consumer of the Home Front: Second World War Civilian Consumption in Transnational Perspective. Edited by Hartmut Berghoff, Jan Logemann and Felix Römer. Oxford University Press (likely 2015)"


PD Dr. Ingo Köhler

  • Research project: Wegmarken des Gründungsgeschehens: Die historische Genese von institutionellen Arrangements und Praxisformen des Gründens seit den 1960er Jahren
  • Research project: Wettbewerbsfaktor Resilienz. Risk Assessment und Krisenmanagement deutscher Unternehmen in Geschichte und Gegenwart (1970-2009)
  • Article in progress: "Marktforschung: Auf der Suche nach der postmodernen Gesellschaft"
  • Forthcoming book: Die Neuvermessung des Automobils. Gesellschaftswandel und das Marketingmanagement der deutschen Autoindustrie in den 1960er Jahren


Ongoing Dissertation Projects

    Yassin Abou El Fadil: Family business in Germany and the U.S. since the industrialization
  • Stina Barrenscheen: Influences on firms' expectations about executives: Changes in personnel decisions, 1960-1990
  • Fabian Engel: Bank marketing and the emergence of a consumer society in West Germany, 1950s - 1970s
  • Julian Faust: The German economy and firms in independent India: chances, risks, and interdependence, circa 1950-1980
  • Gerrit Hollatz: The assets of the House of Hanover: development and strategies, 1913-1953
  • Denise Lehner-Renken: Medicine, markets, and moral: a history of in-vitro fertilisation in West Germany, 1970-1990
  • Bastian Linneweh: Global history of rubber, 1900-1960
  • Benjamin W. Schulze: Business resilience in the German brewing industry, 1960-1989