The second edition of the Spring School will once again provide students and doctoral candidates with an introduction to digital manuscript research. Experts from Münster, Frankfurt and Basel will give talks on the fields of “accessing”, “editing” and “translating” and provide insights into their research material. In the afternoon blocks, staff from the Service Centre for Digital Humanities will introduce participants to working with TEI. An excursion to the Technical Centre of the NRW State Archive and the LWL Archive Office for Westphalia is planned for one day.

The Atlantic and Indian Oceans, spanning vast distances, are not just bodies of water but conduits of global history. They were spaces of human migration, commodity and idea circulation, technological innovation, and political and social reform during the Modern and Late Modern eras. This spring school will focus on the material dimension of cross-oceanic and global exchanges. The participants will study and discuss these issues together with renowned invited scholars, on the basis of primary sources and introductory readings.

Populist movements are gaining ground, right-wing parties are celebrating electoral successes and the cohesion of traditional mainstream parties is declining: Politics, society and the media have been talking about a crisis in party democracy for some time now. This is by no means only the case in Germany, but in many European countries. On Thursday, 12 December 2024, historian Prof. Dr. Silke Mende will take a closer look at these developments. The lecture will take place in the Borken City Archive, room twelve26, and will begin at 7.30 pm.

April 2024 marks the 30th anniversary of Kurt Cobain's death. In honour of this anniversary, presenter Gottfried Haufe and musicologist and sociologist Prof. Michael Custodis from the University of Münster will take a look at the ‘Nirvana phenomenon’ and the musician Kurt Cobain from very different angles. The event at the Rock'n'Pop Museum Gronau starts at 7 pm.

In this public lecture series, experts from leading music institutions will provide insights into their work on three individual dates: Britta Drewitz (Rock'n'Pop-Museum Gronau), Dr. Julia Ronge (Beethoven-Haus Bonn) and Dr. Rebecca Wolf (Instrument Museum of the State Institute for Music Research Berlin) will talk about how they select documents for music exhibitions, creatively stage musical knowledge and make it tangible for visitors. The lecture series is aimed at all those interested in musicology.

The lecture series deals with the challenges for museums, memorials and archives in the face of social change. The plurality of memories in our society raises new questions, as does communication about historical events in the digital age. The Institute for Didactics of History at the University of Münster in cooperation with Villa ten Hompel cordially invite all interested parties to attend the free lecture series.

The Department of Ancient History, the Institute of Classical Philology, the Institute of Classical Archaeology and Christian Archaeology and the Archaeological Museum jointly organise a research colloquium every semester in which classical scholars from all over the world present their research. The lectures are also open to the interested public.

Even in antiquity, humans were shaped by their environment or changed it through intervention. The lecture series looks at human-environment interaction in different natural environments (seashores, mountains, alluvial plains, etc.) and discusses living conditions in antiquity. The lecture series takes place on Mondays from 6 to 8 pm in auditorium F 2. All interested parties are cordially invited. Participation is possible on site or via Zoom.

The colloquium is primarily aimed at advanced students, doctoral candidates and postdocs in Eastern European History and Slavic Studies, but is also open to those interested from the field of general history. On the one hand, it serves the in-depth examination of Master's theses and dissertations that are being written in the Division of Eastern European History. On the other hand, the colloquium offers the opportunity to familiarise oneself with the research projects of Eastern European historians from other universities and to participate in current research debates.

Current research on democracy is the focus of this public online lecture series organised by the contact point Studium im Alter. In 13 lectures – every Monday from 4 to 6 p.m. on Zoom – academics from the University of Münster will present their research on the global rise of right-wing populism, defensive democracy and the rule of law, as well as dissent and conflict in democracy and education. Participation is free of charge and all interested parties are welcome.