Professor Grischa Vercamer

“Pre-modern historians staged the image of their princely protagonists with a certain intention, i.e. often in an idealised, positive or negative way. Modern historiography obtains the individual image of a pre-modern prince and his actions as a ruler precisely from these central text genres, but often reflects too little on the complexity of the respective works and intentions of the authors. It was and is important to me to bundle the achievements of previous research on the history of ideas and conceptions and to expand them structurally and methodologically. In my postdoctoral thesis, for example, I deliberately opted for a comparative approach that combines Western and Eastern European history.

In my research profile, I cover Central Europe and East Central Europe (Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary) and thus strengthen the East Central European cultural area for the pre-modern epochs, which is important for the University of Passau. Digitalisation is also playing an increasingly important role in historical studies. At the University of Passau, I benefit from a close connection to the field of Digital Humanities, which has established itself as an interdisciplinary interface between the humanities and computer science.”