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The importance of «Database of Jewish-Owned Businesses in Nazi-Berlin” for provenance research
Gemäldelager der SKKG © Bruno Augsburger, 2021 Stamps, labels, seals, inscriptions, footnotes or descriptions in sources. Information or references to the origin of an object come to us in many different ways. The Provenance Research Team at the Stiftung für Kunst, Kultur und Geschichte (Foundation for Art, Culture and History,…
Hita in the World: Creating a Place for Intermingling that Connects the Region to the Globe
Masahiko Nishioka is the founder and representative of Hita Place. He began his activities in 2000 to revitalise the central part of Hita City. He was elected as the “Most Passionate Enthusiast in Ōita...
DP-R|EX Data publication
New data release on radical and extremist attitudes in Europe! DP-R|EX is proud to announce the release of the dataset “Radical and Extremist Attitudes in Europe”, now available at the GESIS Data Archive. The data are available here: https://doi.org/10.4232/1.14697 Understanding the roots and dynamics of political and religious extremism has…
Medieval How-to or the Art of Balancing Wildness and Control
On 13 and 14 March 2026 we held an authors’ workshop in Wolfenbüttel. Why? As we all know only too well, instructional and advisory literature was everywhere on the book market in the sixteenth century. Yet the fact that these early printing bestsellers cannot really be understood without taking their…
Epistemic Siege: Digital Blackout and the Fight for Meaning in Iran
TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research By Fatemeh Shams When the first U.S.-Israeli bombs started falling on Tehran on February 28, 2026, it wasn’t just the noise and destruction that shocked Iranian citizens. The nationwide digital blackout imposed by the government and the darkness that followed exacerbated the fear of…
The Order of the Sword Brethren and the Idea of Jerusalem as Heimat
Carsten S. Jensen (Københavns Universitet) doi: https://doi.org/10.11588/heidok.00037616 Foundation of the Order The Order of the Sword Brethren (Militia Christi de Livonia) was founded in the early thirteenth century in what was then known as Livonia (mod. Latvia) as part of the ongoing processes of mission and conquest covering both Latvia…
System prompts in QDA software: an investigation
While writing this blog post, I felt like an investigative journalist. My aim was to find out which system prompts are used in qualitative data analysis (QDA) software. An increasing number of QDA software packages include so-called AI assistants or have been specifically designed for qualitative research using large language…
How to be successful in academia (according to statistics)
Recently, for some reason I don’t remember, I happened across a paper on so-called hot streaks in academic careers. This led me down a rabbit hole into research on success in academia, of which there apparently is quite a lot, especially for the sciences. Unfortunately, I haven’t found much on…
From the First Gay Kiss to “Woke Garbage” – the Department of Defense’s Censorship of Queerness in Film
by Laura Herges May 16, 1929, would go down in history as the birthday of the world’s most prestigious awards ceremony. Nearly 100 years ago, the first Academy Awards took place inside the Blossom Ballroom at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. 270 people had bought a ticket for 5$ (92$ adjusted…
Carl Schmitt’s Afterlife in Decolonial Theory: Rereading Walter Mignolo
TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research By Harald Kümmerle Living with Schmitt’s Ghost To say that Carl Schmitt is a controversial figure would be an understatement. Called the “crown jurist of the Third Reich” for his proactive engagement with Nazi politics, he remains a key point of reference for the…
A New Tutorial to Level Up Your Research Data Skills
From an Excel table to a Wikidata entry in 10 minutes. Learn how to easily transform a spreadsheet into semantic data — with the help of OpenRefine.
Ruins and Visions of Empire: Famagusta and the Quest for Revival in the Late Nineteenth Century
‘Ruin’ was the primary term used by countless visitors to describe the Cypriot port town of Famagusta during the period of Ottoman rule (1571–1878), to the extent that the two terms became almost synonymous. A notable example is Namık Kemal (1840–88), the foremost Ottoman thinker and a critic of the…
Past, Present and Future of Socio-legal Epistemic Pluralism
Is interdisciplinary legal research in crisis because of its lack of theoretical unity? Or is its diversity its greatest strength? This post looks beyond the boundaries of our own discipline and argues that we need to understand our own history better in order to conduct better research in the future.[1]…
Announcing The History of Christian Kabbalah Podcast
The History of Christian Kabbalah Podcast explores the remarkable encounter between two religious traditions: the meeting of Jewish mysticism and Christian theology. From the Renaissance to the early Enlightenment, a wide range of Christian thinkers—humanists, theologians, visionaries, and scholars—turned to Kabbalah in search of hidden wisdom and deeper insight into…
Portrait F. Mendelssohn B. (engl.)
F. Goya (c. 1815–1828), attr., Portrait of Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy (1809–1847), late work “graphic phase”, Bordeaux 1825, oil on canvas, dimensions 42 x 33 cm The canvas has been relined. Relining and varnishing/restoration can smooth the brushstrokes somewhat, soften the microrelief, and reduce the legibility of the lines, yet the…
Cognitive Dissonance in Stay-Leave Decisions of Ukrainian Forced Migrants
TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research By Natalia Zaitseva The findings outlined in this text came as a surprise to me as a researcher. Since the beginning of the Russian war on Ukraine, I have been researching the motives for mobility/immobility among Ukrainian women during wartime. However, in the course…