Our institution and research department are happy to announce  a guest lecture by professor Stefan Berger on Eric Hobsbawm and National History. Below a short introduction to the topic of the lecture.

Eric Hobsbawm has been one of the most influential historians during the 20th century well-known for his synthesis of the 19th and 20the century as well as his work on nationalism. Stefan Berger will give some biographical predilections of Hobsbawm towards the phenomenon of nationalism and national history writing to discuss in which ways scholarly encounters were vital in shaping Hobsbawm’s attitudes towards historiographical nationalism.

How does the attitude in Hobsbawm’s keyworks relate to national history and historiographical nationalism, in particular his great syntheses on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but also, more specifically, his work on nationalism. Can Hobsbawm be seen more as an historian of empire than of nation states? How does his particular approach relate to global and transnational history?

And how does Hobsbawm’s work on labour history and the history of social movements relate to his attitudes towards historiographical nationalism? Finally Berger will also discuss how relevant Hobsbawm’s approach to history writing is for historians today.

About Stefan Berger – Professor of Social History at Ruhr Universität Bochum (Germany), where he is the director of the Institute of Social Movements. Expert on modern and contemporary European, German and British history, comparative labor history, nationalism and national identity studies, history of historiography and theory of history. Stefan Berger is also the Primary Investigator of the research project UNREST (Unsettling Remembering and Social Cohesion in Transnational Europe).

The lecture will be held in English, at our premises in Flemingsberg,

Free entrance,

Welcome!