About

Welcome to the History and Theory blog, a student-led project that aims to make historical theory easy and accessible. The project entails a fortnightly seminar at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and an infrequently published podcast.

Historical research is often marked by a divide between ‘detached’ theoretical debates on the one hand, and ‘anecdotal’ empirical studies on the other. In 2018 we started the Reading Workshop: History and Theory to confront this weakness by providing an informal forum for rigorous discussion of the theoretical foundations of research in the humanities. In our meetings we discuss different historical theories and try to assess their value for historians. Texts are chosen democratically at the beginning of every semester; so far we have read Walter Benjamin, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Reinhart Koselleck, Jennifer Jensen Wallach and numerous others.

On our podcast, we interview historians from different perspectives and approaches and see what they have to say about historical theory, the historical practice, and what history means to the wider world and society. You can find our podcasts on Soundcloud in the sidebar to the top left. All our podcasts are also available on iTunes, Pocketcast, Spotify, Stitcher and CastBox. As well as this, make sure to follow us on Twitter at @theory_history.

For more information on the workshop and the podcast, email us at historyandtheoryproject@gmail.com.

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