Leibniz Value of the Past: Research Hubs and Research Labs

The alliance takes up the issues and research perspectives outlined above by clustering the validation aspect of the past into three overarching perspectives:

Regimes of evidence
Spatiotemporal paradigms
Past as a public resource

Within the three Research Hubs there are three Research Labs each, which set thematic priorities and in which groups of researchers work on individual research questions together with external cooperation partners.

Research Hub I: Regimes of Evidence

Building on the research conducted in the Leibniz Research Alliance "Historical Authenticity" on processes of authentication and authorisation in historical disciplines and in public historical culture, Research Hub I enquires as to the regimes of evidence that frame and organise the representation of the past. With the double meaning of the term evidence in mind, signifying as it does both proof (evidence) and conviction (certainty), the focus is on the connection between lifeworlds and horizons of interpretation and the interrelationship between practices of evaluation and authentication based on language, objects and documentation. The creation of evidence and knowledge systems at the intersection of language, performance and lifeworlds will be explored in public discourses about the past, and object-based plausibility strategies will be examined by bringing together questions of museology and the history of science at the intersection of materiality and mediality. In view of the challenges in the digital age of making information transparent and reliably accessible, the hub also intends to lay the foundations for a Digital Heuristics and Digital History, drawing especially on archival and library expertise.

Research Labs

The focus is on the value-constituting production and power of evidence in the medium of language, through language criticism and narrativity, as well as through knowledge management and performative practices. An investigation will be undertaken of contexts of the mobilisation of persuasion and processes by which values, norms, truth become established in different eras. Key research questions include: On the basis of what linguistic and performative practices (determinations of relevance, constitutions of value) do actors construct and legitimise historical values? What strategies are used in conducting counter-discourses (of language criticism)? What norms are established to enforce inclusion and exclusion? What practices lend plausibility to historical values that do not conform to the norms? The diversity of eras and time periods (Early Middle Ages, the early modern period, national socialism and Holocaust, post-war years, present), geographical areas (here esp. Germany and East Central and Eastern Europe) and subjects (language, biography, literature, canon formation, historical reenactment) covered in this lab will serve to reveal various structures, principles and variations of regimes of evidence.
In view of the current media transformation, the lab asks how media upheavals produce new, and transform existing, evidence. It examines plausibility strategies and mechanisms by which history is transmitted in the context of museums and the history of science. How do the object narratives of material, media and digital objects interact in the multimedia museum experience, and what historical narratives and possible interpretations do they suggest? What values play a prominent role in the conservation, restoration and preparation of museum objects? What implications does the immateriality of digital objects have for the requirements placed on object biographies? How are historical interpretive models collectivised in museum displays, and what continuities shape the collective memory of internalised value attributions to this day? The lab addresses the significance, intentionality and idiosyncrasy of visual symbols, for instance with reference to the formation of forms of racism in colonial image and object cultures. In opposition to ocularcentrism and the preference for audiovisual sources, it enquires into the role of sensory knowledge in museums of technology, natural history and cultural history. It discusses how past sensory experiences may be effectively communicated and what insight into innovation processes and knowledge production may be gained from the study of digital materiality. Practical examples will be used to analyse how museum displays and the presentation of current research can create spaces revealing differences and similarities between then and now and enabling us to question our own behaviour.
The lab is devoted to the appropriation of history in the digital age. The aim is to make transparent the value and thought systems that inform discourses about the past in the digital knowledge space. It will look at digital source verification methods and methods for cataloguing and classifying metaarchives and digital reading rooms. To create the building blocks for a digital history, the lab will work towards establishing a structured exchange between research and infrastructures (archives, museum and library collections) in order to explore their role in knowledge and value creation in times of massive media transformation. These objectives are to be achieved in cooperation with the Leibniz Association's archives working group with complementary work packages. These deal with indexing and digitalisation practices (e.g. selection, findability, sustainability) as one of the challenges involved in making collections available to research, in prioritisation, and in developing standards for the virtual reconstruction of destroyed records and (re-)uniting of scattered collections (such as by combining the principles of provenance and pertinence). They are also concerned with the importance of data integrity, data interpretation, new visualisation methods and transmedial formats for historical narratives in the digital knowledge space.

Research Hub II: Spatiotemporal paradigms

Research Hub II explores spatiotemporal paradigms that shape value attributions concerning the past. It is based on the principle that the value of the past has in the first place a certain reach in that it refers to historical and political spaces and their intended or desired order, as is apparent, for instance, when we speak of "European", "occidental" or "oriental" values. Secondly, the description of cultures is generally based on certain attributions of temporality, as we can see in attributes such as "progressive", "traditional", "developed" or "emerging". The hub aims to strengthen the study of the interdependencies of conceptions of space and time by asking how historical and political spaces and their temporal structures are both the precondition and the result of value attributions – and what kinds of scaling may be observed and used to describe them from a historical and analytical perspective. This is to be achieved by examining dynamic spaces that appear as spatiotemporal constructs such as continents, states, cities, centres and peripheries, and whose perception and description in historical perspective is fluid and thus able to challenge values that once served as benchmarks or points of reference and replace them with new ones. In research on temporalities of historical culture, the alliance explores the extent to which the culture of remembrance creates its own conceptions of space and time. The hub examines the relationship of the three temporal planes of past, present and future in different eras and institutions and their impact on the construction and interpretation of history. Finally, the hub addresses the dissolution of spatiotemporal thought in debates about the Anthropocene. In ecological discourse, too, the past is not a place of nostalgic reminiscence, but rather a repository of geological, biological and ecological knowledge that will be of great importance for the maintenance of stable ecosystems in the future.

Research Labs

The lab examines from a historical, spatial research and educational science perspective how spatial connections determine historical values/value frameworks and these in term shape conceptions of space. It addresses the spatiotemporal modes of European self-characterisations and portrayals by others in order to account for both the breadth and the uniformity in the constructions of Europe. The projects focus on Europe in its global and colonial contexts. They ask, firstly, what pasts and spaces were used or disregarded in historical descriptions and how temporality and historicity determined relationships within Europe and the hierarchical or asymmetric order of the continent as compared to other regions of the world. Areas of research will include the promotion of European cohesion in historical educational media as well as early modern descriptions of Europe from outside its borders. Secondly, they will examine how the legacy of colonialism and migration now being rediscovered has shaped European cities in their materiality, social behaviour and self-image, and how these colonial contexts are reflected in migrant places and societies.
Looking at concrete and imagined places – museums, memorial sites, monuments, urban complexes, man-made environments, in literature and autobiography – the lab examines how temporality and spatiality shape regimes of historicity by ordering and structuring past, present and future. In visitor-centric exhibition analyses, cognitive psychology studies, discourse-historical and cultural history approaches and in dialogue with those involved in history teaching and outreach on the ground, the lab will explore how historicity is brought to life through layers of time, what orientations in time and in history these sites offer with their exhibition narrations, and how the inherent interplay of the perception of space and time and the cognitive processing of the asynchronicities of historical places influence the interpretation of historical content. Building on the DFG (German Research Foundation) priority programme "Aesthetic Temporalities" and studies of political landscapes in social constructivism and cultural history research, it will analyse aesthetic value attributions (visual media, literary works) of designed spaces and examine "reified narratives" of past and present visions of the future. Finally, it examines shifts in perceptions of space and time in political and cultural emergencies and periods of upheaval in order to investigate how individuals are impacted by social notions of time.
The dissolution of boundaries is a symptom of the modern era, and no concept describes the blurring of boundaries in time and space, nature and culture, more aptly than the "Anthropocene". One species, man, becomes the (almost) monocausal geobiological force and permanently dominates the development of the planet. This era is marked by new time-space perceptions that radically reenvisage or even abolish deep-rooted boundaries and notions of order. Taking an interdisciplinary approach bringing together the natural sciences, social sciences and humanities and integrating disparate research institutions, the lab examines the epistemic potential of linking geobiological temporalities with local and planetary spatial perspectives. Of central importance here is the question of what values are attributed to what pasts when "natural" and cultural, spatial and temporal orders are rearranged against the backdrop of the erosion of boundaries. One focus here is on the historical and social assessment and valorisation/exploitation/harnessing/leveraging of collections as cultural repositories and ecological archives that make it possible to project the past into the present and future and to make differentiated predictions regarding the development of time-space dimensions.

Research Hub III: Past as a public resource

Research Hub III is concerned with the past as a public resource. In contrast to the depletion of natural resources, the past initially appears to be an inexhaustible reservoir. But the past, too, is taken possession of, selectively invoked and "exploited". As a public resource there is always a battle being waged for its ownership; it is the starting point for struggles over distribution and recognition, serves as raw material for the formation of identity, just as it constitutes a source of revenue in terms of exchange and monetary value in its public revaluation and instrumentalisation. In three approaches, the hub examines how social actors make history public, reappraise it, reject or reinterpret it. In the lab Litigious Value of the Past, the focus is on the resulting conflicts, such as those between social majorities and minorities or between different religious groups and their relationship to secular actors. The lab Practices of Appropriation is devoted in particular to modes of appropriation in the context of the transformation of the media and asks how historical subjects and events are repeatedly interrogated and deemed relevant once again. The lab Valorisation and Commodification addresses the influence of economic factors on the production and communication of historical knowledge.

Research Labs

In the light of recent discussions about decolonisation and debates about the resolution of historical conflicts in terms of cultures of remembrance, the lab addresses reappraisals of history by various historical actors and their social implications in democracies, dictatorships and authoritarian regimes. The litigious value of the past is particularly apparent in attitudes to the legacy of colonial or dictatorial pasts, encompassing not only debates about uncomfortable monuments and street names, but also the restitution claims and demands for reparation that accompany the reappraisal of colonial pasts, and the ways in which racism is dealt with in Europe and beyond. Other focal conflicts around the (re-)appraisal of history are the historically underpinned and place-specific/geographically localised claim of religious actors to the privilege of interpretation and to leadership, and the question of how religious pluralisation is historicised in multireligious contexts. A third field of study encompasses debates about memory and recognition of genocides, civil wars and the violent persecution of ethnic and religious minorities. Here the focus will be on international reconciliation initiatives, truth commissions and mediation processes.
The central theme of the lab is the media transformation that is producing numerous new practices of appropriating the past. The projects and networking activities in the lab explore these processes of negotiating history and the past in public, or in segments of the public, in terms of what historical events and subjects are declared relevant to the present by different actors. It will investigate the extent to which the multiplication of communicative spaces in which the past is debated and contested challenges existing monopolies on interpretation, and creates new ones. In times in which people co-produce their historical knowledge by drawing on a wide range of different media, from the feature pages of newspapers with a transnational reach to TikTok videos and Hitler and Holocaust memes, it is increasingly difficult to reach a consensus on the culture of remembrance. The global availability of communications services and media representations mean that nation-state-based societies in particular are experiencing a rapid increase in heterogenisation. The work in the lab looks at these dynamics in various different spheres of activity. It will analyse interventions regarding the politics of the past and media strategies of populist and New Right actors. Other research foci are commemorative practices in history lessons in which members of different generations with different media repertoires come together, the debate about rituals of remembrance at memorial sites and on anniversaries, and new forms of historical narration in digital media.
As part of its focus on commodification, the lab addresses the valorisation and commercialisation of the past. Processes of de-industrialisation, gentrification of former working class neighbourhoods, the musealisation of heritage sites, "eventisation" of regional traditions, redesignation of closed industrial sites as event locations, history marketing and tourism – all of these phenomena are linked not only by the economic increasing or decreasing of the value of the past but also by its exploitation. History thus becomes a resource in urban and regional planning and in the private sector as well. Public History, (Critical) Heritage Studies, Memory Studies and Tourism Studies have long been investigating commodification processes like these. There is, however, a research gap when it comes to a considered understanding of the influence of economic factors on the production and communication of historical knowledge and on the historicisation of these phenomena. The lab takes this research gap as the starting point for its investigations, which focus on the role of museums in structural transformation, the valorisation of industrial heritage, and commercial city tours and regional development plans. The lab complements and broadens the discourse about the value of the past in conferring a sense of identity to include that of economic exploitation in the creative industries and in culture-based urban and regional development. The individual projects are linked by the question of how economic values relate to social and moral ones in the marketing of history, and what values defy monetisation.