Jürgen Osterhammel (born 1952 in Wipperfürth, North Rhine-Westphalia) is a German historian specialized in world history.
Academia
Osterhammel started his academic career as a research fee student at the London School of Economics in 1976/77 and studied and worked there under Professor Ian Nish. In 1980 he obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Kassel (Germany) in modern history. Two years later he started as a fellow at the German Historical Institute in London. Between 1986 and 1990 he was a senior lecturer in political science at the University of Freiburg (Germany). He then worked for seven years as professor of modern history at the FernUniversität Hagen, a distance-learning university in Germany. He has also worked as a professor of modern history at the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva and the in the same position in the University of Konstanz (Germany) in 1999. In 2001-2002 he was a fellow at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences. In 2014 he was elected a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy.
Awards
In 2018 he received the Balzan Prize for Global History "For his fundamental contribution to studies in global history and the definition of the discipline. For his method, which combines the rigour of empirical research while opening onto wide perspectives in an admirably balanced way, both through comparison and through the study of interconnected histories. For his elegant, fascinating style of writing."
Areas of Research
Colonialism
Eurasian history since the 18th century
History and theory of historiography
World or global history
Selected bibliography
Colonialism: A Theoretical Overview (2nd edn., Princeton 2005) Globalization: A Short History (with Niels P. Petersson, Princeton 2005) The Transformation of the World: A Global History of the Nineteenth Century (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014) Decolonization: A Short History (with Jan C. Jansen, Princeton University Press, 2017)
Other websites
Jurgen Osterhammel on Amazon
Detailed interview with J. Osterhammel in the journal Itinerario
References
1952 births
Living people
German historians
Academic staff of the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies