Leibniz Value of the Past: Research Programme and Research Groups 2025-2029

Research Programme 2025-2029 (Start September 2025)

In the Alliance’s second funding phase, we will foreground the active social shaping of value production through references to the past and historical constructions. We have defined three central research foci: "Evidence Production", "Space-Time Constructions" and the "Past as a Puclic Resource".

Research focus I,Evidence Production, uses the dual meaning of the notion of “evidence” as proof (evidence) and apparent insight (certainty) to examine the persuasiveness of material and documentary evidence in the context of horizons of validity and historically configured worlds of meaning. This research focus assesses evidence-related values and value attributions such as originality and authenticity, documentary value, testimonial value, and documentary value. Furthermore, we scrutinize heuristics, collections, representations, and formats through which stories are selected, preserved, justified, proven, documented in the media, communicated, and displayed. Within this framework, we also reflect upon the value of transparency in science communication, for example in the context of digitization and participation processes (open science and citizen science).

Research Focus II,Space-Time Constructions, examines spatio-temporal patterns of order that underlie value attributions to the past. Values and topoi such as “age value,” “historical value,” “creation,” “origin,” “tradition,” “preservation,” “continuity,” “change,” “modernity,” and “sustainability” address the temporal dimension. Values such as “home,” “nation,” “nature,” “cultural landscape,” “Europe,” and “mobility,” on the other hand, serve spatial localization and a transgression of boundaries that broadens horizons. There is a lack of research into the interdependencies between concepts of space and time in terms of how political, local, global, and (historical) cultural spaces and their (epoch-defining) temporal structures are both a prerequisite for and a result of value attributions. The working groups “Dynamic Space-Time Constructions” and “Human-Nature Relations in the Anthropocene” are particularly dedicated to this connection between space-time value formation.

Research Focus III deals with the past as a public resource and its negotiation and creation of value, which are always contested and serve as a starting point for struggles over identity and distribution. First, this research focus concentrates on the values that address the relationship between the individual and society as well as the relationship between the “Global South” and the “North,” and thus deal with power relations and mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion: Identity and diversity, enlightenment, emancipation, freedom, democracy, human rights, self-determination, and justice are all examples of social values for which the “value of the past” is central as a form of political argumentation, recognition, and demarcation, which all contribute to the negotiation of social values.

Second, this group focuses on processes of valorization and exploitation. The focus here is on values in their materialized, visualized, and performative forms, such as the value of the built environment and its sustainable use, the cultural values of objects and collectibles, and the value of public-oriented historicization and musealization, for example in processes of structural change, in dealing with cultural and “energy landscapes,” or with regard to the tourist value of heritage and cultural heritage. The utility and exchange value of the past, i.e., its economic, cultural, and political utilization, play a central role here, which also includes topics such as reparations and restitution procedures.

The focus is on the value-constituting production and impact of evidence in the medium of language, through language criticism, literature, autobiography, narrativity, performative practices, and intermedial formats. Particularly in modern narratives of the past—whether scientific or not—the historical document appears as a particularly valuable or value-bearing text, and the documentary principle—at the same time a genre in its own right—as a procedure adequate to this value. Even before its historicization and interpretation, the document is regarded in common perception as an authority and key argument.
How is digital transformation changing the generation of historical knowledge, and what new systems of evidence are emerging in this context? In collaboration with the Leibniz Association’s Working Group on Archives, the NFDI4Memory and NFDI4Culture consortia, and the Center for Contemporary Digital History, we are developing the foundational elements of digital heuristics and historiography. We will reflect upon the transformation of archives into infrastructure and service facilities that think and work comprehensively in a digital way in a networked world. The project will also further develop possibilities and effects of information technology-supported and digital processes and ways of organizing knowledge. One focus is on digital practices and workflows in archives and collections: new digital tools (e.g., for layout recognition, multimodal analysis of text-image relationships, and image classification tasks) are being tested, examined with regard to their potential for gaining insights, and compared with the requirements of the humanities.
This group’s point of departure is the observation that the structure, content, and dynamics of social negotiation processes surrounding the interpretation of the past are undergoing lasting change as a result of media transformation and the communicative practices associated with this shift.
Within this context, this research group examines formats, practices, and actors involved in historical value-setting processes in schools, memorial sites, and museums. Three questions guide its work: 1) The group investigates which pasts are marked as relevant and valued in participatory processes of developing historical representations, as well as in the course of appropriating these representations. In line with the core questions of the network, the group also focuses on the explicit or implicit value judgments and positions on hegemonic discourses that are inscribed in these decisions. 2) The group investigates the strategies used by the actors involved in the negotiation processes to produce historical evidence. 3.) The group explores the challenges that arise in new participatory formats due to the variously legitimized positions of experts and laypeople as spokespersons, and how the participating institutions manage plurality and conflicts of interpretation.
This group conducts cross-epochal and comparative research from historical, art, spatial, and educational perspectives on how spatial and temporal constructions determine historical value systems and, conversely, shape them.
One focus is on how “Europe” and “European” were constructed and normatively charged with meaning through spatio-temporal value attributions in different epochs and national contexts. A second focus is on “historical-cultural times”: Using concrete and imagined places—museums, memorials, urban ensembles, cultural landscapes, as well as literature and the visual arts—the group investigates how temporality and spatiality co-construct history and regimes of historicity and make them physically and cognitively experienceable (including in digital spaces).
This team uses an interdisciplinary approach that combines natural sciences, social sciences and the humanities to inquire into which values are attributed to which pasts from natural, environmental, and technological perspectives. Furthermore, the group asks which new concepts of space and time are established when “natural” and cultural, spatial, and temporal orders are rearranged under a new concept of epoch.
In this context, the project will examine, among other things, ideas, constructions, and visualizations of natural-historical deep time and long-term anthropogenic processes in terms of their impact on human actions and self-understanding as a species. The group will also explore the question of the value of natural history collections between colonialism and future knowledge, and in relation to conviviality and rewilding. The project will be expanded to include the question of the revaluation of natural history collections in the wake of political regime and paradigm shifts, as well as the restitution and “repatriation” of collection holdings. Last but not least, the team will discuss the potential and problems associated with the genetic and digital cataloguing of natural history collections and their economic exploitation.
This research group investigates contested pasts in a) discourses/discourse spaces; b) material and visual evidence; and c) forms of social, political, and legal reappraisal. The team will conduct research on the value of disputes, spaces of dispute, objects of dispute, and forms of dispute on a global comparative basis. The group will focus on the instrumentalization of history and memory in armed conflicts and political disputes. How does disputing the evaluation of the past contribute to war and violent conflicts—or in what ways can it help prevent conflict?
This research group’s work focuses on the valorization and exploitation of the past in terms of cultural and economic appreciation, as well as devaluation.
Under the heading “Histories & Heritages,” this group explores the question of whether object-related approaches such as cultural heritage research focus on different “questions of value” than public history, memory studies, and historical sciences. In this context, the handling and sensory perception of urban heritage and corresponding processes of valorization and devalorization will be examined. Following research on the microeconomics of museum shops (Saryusz-Wolska, Hochmuth, Stach 2024), the team will also pursue these questions by means of integrating quantitative economic data.
Transformation processes are the focus of the heading “Structural Change.” On the one hand, we will extend our research on culture-related development (e.g., in energy landscapes) and on the contribution of museums and other institutions related to the past in these processes. On the other hand, the question of change and transformation in the sense of a “transformation value” will be brought more sharply into focus. This will make it possible to broaden the debate on values surrounding practices such as conversion and reuse, demolition permits, the valorization of built heritage, and even the artificial creation of the past. The foundation for expanding this discussion comes from the current discourse on sustainability and the economic, social, ecological, and cultural values associated with it. Overall, this focus should contribute to an understanding of valorization that reflects social transformations not as a mere questioning of historically established values, but as an integral part of processes of renewal.