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Research Projects

Current research projects

Historicizing Performative Practices of Historical Culture in CEE (Reenactment)
This project explores the origins and early developments of historical reenactments in Central Eastern Europe during the 1970s and 1980s. Reenactments – the re-staging of historical events – are examined as embodied, actor-centered practices of engaging with the past. The research focuses on their emergence and functions within the state-socialist context, particularly in the GDR, as well as on the transnational networks connecting reenactment groups across?Central Eastern Europe. The project aims to historicize reenactments as part of a “history from below,” analyzing their role at the intersection of official memory politics, grassroots appropriation, and international exchange.

??Bundesarchiv, Bild?183-1983-1015-029, Wolfgang Kluge


Nuclear Heritage in Central-Eastern Europe
Nuclear heritage refers to the processes and practices of engaging with and appropriating the legacies of the nuclear age. This research project focuses on post-nuclear landscapes that are deeply embedded in the social, political, and ecological structures of the regions in which they emerged. It examines how such sites in Central and Eastern Europe are historically framed, politically negotiated, and socially remembered. Building on my research on the post-uranium mining landscape in Ronneburg (Eastern Germany) and the international workshop “Nuclear Cultural Heritage in Central-Eastern Europe” (2023), the aim is to establish a transnational and interdisciplinary research network. Through case studies, the project comparatively analyzes and critically reflects on narratives, actors, and practices in dealing with nuclear legacies – ranging from remembrance and reuse to silencing.

? Juliane Tomann


Infrastructures of Memory: Actants of Globalisation and their Impact on German and Polish Memory Culture.

Infrastructure studies emerged in the 1990s within science and technology studies and have since developed into a broader “infrastructure turn” across the humanities and social sciences. Infrastructures are more than physical systems like pipes, cables, or transmitters. They form the often-invisible background of social life — deeply embedded in human organization, enabling and constraining practices, and only becoming visible when they break down or impose limitations. Today, infrastructures are understood as relational networks or assemblages that both shape and are shaped by communities, norms, and conventions. They carry not only functional but also aesthetic, symbolic, social, and political meanings, influencing how societies are organized and experienced. The question of how different types of infrastructures shape exhibitions as memorial artifacts and how they reveal their agency, sometimes in seemingly ordinary circumstances, still awaits in-depth scholarly analysis - a gap which the research project addresses.

Subproject at the professorship: From Politics to Practice: The Role of Infrastructure in the Museum of the Second World?War in Gdansk (Juliane Tomann & Magdalena Saryusz-Wolska)

The establishment of the Museum of the Second World War in Gdańsk represents a unique case within the dynamically developing museum landscape of East Central Europe. From its inception, the decision to create the museum was inherently political, and its development has been shaped by ongoing political struggles, controversies, and interventions (Logemann & Tomann 2019; Machcewicz 2023; Kobielska 2024). While scholarly attention has largely focused on these politicized debates, other crucial aspects have only recently begun to receive scholarly attention (Tańczuk 2024).

Our research shifts the focus away from the dominant political discourse to explore the practical and infrastructural dimensions that shape the museum’s operation behind the scenes. Based on exhibition analysis and in-depth interviews with experts involved in the production of the exhibition, including directors, curators, filmmakers, media designers or scenographers, we adopt an infrastructural perspective to examine how the physical construction of the museum building influenced the curatorial choices of the exhibition. In addition, we analyze the role of non-human actors, such as water, and their unforeseen impact on both the construction process, the final exhibition and its maintenance.

First project meeting in Warsaw on March 22 and 23, 2024: Presentation of all sub-projects and tour of the construction site of the Polish National Museum

Impressions of the first meeting:

?? DHI Warschau


Doing history - reenactment as performative practice in the USA, Germany and Poland


Doing gender in historical reenactment


Workshops

Reconfiguring history beyond disciplinarity. Emerging interdisciplinary research fields and their approaches towards history

Everyone is talking about interdisciplinarity. But what does this mean in relation to history? What happens when researchers looking at the past are not trained historians but rather have a background in performance studies? Which approaches do newer research fields employ when investigating the past and what do they understand by the term “history”? And what interdisciplinary approaches does history use to gain new information about the past? These questions are investigated in the series of workshops in 2021 and 2022, with international participants from differing disciplines and academic fields. The results will be published as a special issue.

You can find a report on the first workshop here. Following workshops took place in January and October 2022.?The results of the discussions will be summarized in a special issue for the journal "Rethinking History", which will be published in 2026.

This is a joint project with Joanna Wawrzyniak ?(Sociology, University of Warsaw) and the Imre Kertész Kolleg Jena.


Publication projects

Juliane Tomann and Joanna Wawrzyniak (eds.):Beyond Disciplinarity: Emerging Interdisciplinary Fields and Their Reconfigurations of History. Special Issue (Rethinking History, forthcoming 2026).

Blog "Doing I Public I History"

Cord Arendes and Stefanie Samida from Heidelberg University, and myself run the blog "Doing I Public I History". It is devoted, in particular, to the performative practice of public history, and puts forward different modes of making history as "doing history".


  1. Fakult?t für Philosophie, Kunst-, Geschichts- und Gesellschaftswissenschaften
  2. Institut für Geschichte

Professorship for Public History


Universit?t Regensburg
Sedanstra?e 1, SE02
93055 Regensburg
Telefon 0941 943 7682

juliane.tomann@ur.de