Chair of Historical Educational Research
Prof. Dr. Till Kössler
The research group focuses on the history of education and upbringing, family, childhood, and youth. It sees its mission as contributing to a critical understanding of the present and to reflective action in educational practice through theory-driven research into historical contexts and social change. The members of the research group adopt a broad, socio-historical and cultural-historical approach: They are interested in education policy and educational institutions, in pedagogical concepts and educational practices, as well as in the transformation of childhood, youth, and the family as both a part of and a result of competing political-cultural projects aimed at social and personal reform. In doing so, they build thematic and theoretical bridges between the fields of education and history.
The chair’s focus is on 19th- and 20th-century German and European history, but it also increasingly seeks to address global historical questions. Current projects deal, among other things, with the history of violence and nonviolence in educational relationships and childhood since the Enlightenment, the history of education and growing up in authoritarian societies, the history of work, vocational training, and education since 1900, the conceptual history of education in the 20th century, and the history of youth and migration in the Federal Republic of Germany and the United Kingdom in the 1970s and 1980s. In doing so, the chair continues research trends at the Department of Historical Education at the University of Halle-Wittenberg (Link).
Contact
University of Cologne Faculty of
Human
Sciences Department of Education and Social SciencesHistorical Education ResearchGronewaldstr. 2
D-50931 ColognePhone: 0221-470-4735