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Prof. Stefan Berger

Director
Ruhr University Bochum
Stefan Berger is Professor of Social History and the History of Social Movements at Ruhr University Bochum, where he is also excecutive chair of the Foundation Library of the Ruhr. Before joining Ruhr University in 2011, he was Professor of Modern German and Comparative European History at the University of Manchester (2005 – 2011) and Professor of Contemporary History at the University of Glamorgan (2000 – 2005). He is currently chairing two externally-funded projects on industrial heritage in the Ruhr in global comparative perspective and industrial heritage and the lieux de memoire of the Ruhr. He is also directing an oral history project on the mining history of the Ruhr. Previously he has chaired the European Science Foundation Programme ‘Representations of the Past: the Writing of National Histories in Europe, 1750 to the Present’.  He has published widely on comparative labour history, the history of social movements, the comparative history of historiography, historical theory and the history of nationalism and national identity. His most recent monograph is ‘The Past as History: National Identity and Historical Consciousness in Modern Europe’ (Palgrave MacMillan, 2015). His most recent edited collection is ‘Nationalizing Empires’ (with Alexei Miller, Central European University Press, 2015). On industrial heritage he published “Representing the Industrial Age: Heritage and Identity in the Ruhr and South Wales”, in: Peter Itzen and Christian Müller (eds), The Invention of Industrial Pasts. Heritage, Political Culture and Economic Debates in Great Britain and Germany, 1850 – 2010 (Augsburg, 2013), pp. 14 – 35.
“Industriekultur und Strukturwandel in deutschen Bergbauregionen nach 1945”, in: Dieter Ziegler (ed.), Geschichte des deutschen Bergbaus, vol. 4: Rohstoffgewinnung im Strukturwandel. Der deutsche Bergbau im 20. Jahrhundert (Münster, 2013), pp. 571 – 602.

Sessions in which Prof. Stefan Berger attends

Monday 29 August, 2022

Time Zone: (GMT-05:00) Eastern Time (US & Canada)
5:30 PM
5:30 PM - 7:00 PM | 1 hour 30 minutes

Si la vallée du canal de Lachine a été le berceau de l’industrialisation canadienne, la géographie industrielle métropolitaine ne s’y est pas confinée, peu s’en faut, Outre les grandes concentrations d’entreprises des quartiers centraux, elle est constituée des réseaux infrastructuraux, d’une douzaine de centrales hydroélectriques et des ensembles manufacturiers disséminés dans une quinzaine de petites villes aujourd’hui intégrées dans l’aire métropolitaine. La conférence proposera un surv...

Gérard Beaudet

Keynote speaker

Tuesday 30 August, 2022

Time Zone: (GMT-05:00) Eastern Time (US & Canada)
5:30 PM
5:30 PM - 7:00 PM | 1 hour 30 minutes

Efforts to preserve industrial heritage occurs in a socio-economic and political context. But what is being preserved and for whom? And, relatedly, what is the relationship between industrial heritage sites and the deindustrialized working-class communities that often adjoin them? The keynote will consider the ways that the preservation of Montreal’s Lachine Canal, Canada’s premier industrial heritage site, has enabled gentrification processes that have forc...

Wednesday 31 August, 2022

Time Zone: (GMT-05:00) Eastern Time (US & Canada)
5:30 PM
5:30 PM - 7:00 PM | 1 hour 30 minutes

In this lecture, I would like to talk about deindustrialised communities, heritage and memory in the context of right-wing populism. Drawing on studies of memory and heritage, I argue that right-wing populists have cornered the market on talking about the past of deindustrialised communities. They have successfully misrepresented this rich and complex history to fuel rage, resentment, fear and reactionary nostalgia. Indeed, ‘the past’, and in particular the industr...

Friday 2 September, 2022

Time Zone: (GMT-05:00) Eastern Time (US & Canada)
3:30 PM
3:30 PM - 5:00 PM | 1 hour 30 minutes

In the refusal of people in communities abandoned by industrial capital to abandon their own places, we can read an implicit critique of the mobility and unaccountability of capital, raised by those who were once inside (however tenuously or uncomfortably) and now find themselves marginalized, “left behind.” The desire to catch up again, whether through attracting new investment or transvaluing abandoned sites as tourist attractions, makes this an essentially conservative critique that is ...