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Kerstin Brückweh takes up Hannah Arendt Visiting Chair at the University of Toronto
In the academic year 2026/2027, IRS historian Kerstin Brückweh will be teaching at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto. There, she is taking up the prestigious Hannah Arendt Visiting Chair in German and European Studies.
Kerstin Brückweh leads the Research Area “Contemporary History and Archive” at the Leibniz Institute for Research on Society and Space (IRS) and is Professor of Historical Urban and Spatial Research at the European University Viadrina in Frankfurt (Oder). The chair is named after the German-American political theorist and writer Hannah Arendt, who fled Germany in 1933 to escape Nazi persecution. It is funded by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD).
“With Kerstin Brückweh, the Hannah Arendt Visiting Chair is being taken up by a historian who consistently places German history within European and transnational contexts,” says DAAD President Prof. Dr. Joybrato Mukherjee.
Kerstin Brückweh examines the interplay between social systems and individual lifeworlds, as well as between expert knowledge and everyday behaviour. Her research ranges from the history of violence in 20th-century Germany and the history of knowledge in 19th- and 20th-century Britain to the history of social transformations before, during and after 1989. In a seminar in Toronto, she uses the history of a single-family home to explore how the political, social and urban upheavals of the 20th century shaped everyday life in Germany.
“I am delighted that this prestigious visiting professorship will strengthen the IRS’s collaborative ties with the University of Toronto and its Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy,” says Oliver Ibert, Scientific Director of the IRS.