A historian's view on PhD supervision, internationalisation, and gender history

00:00:14: Welcome to today's episode of Chances and Challenges, the BGHS podcast.

00:00:15: I'm your host, Sabine Schäfer.

00:00:17: Today, we're not dealing with one topic, not with two topics, but we're dealing with three topics that every now and then have elicited vibrant debates and sometimes contestations at the same time.

00:00:28: Doctoral supervision, internationalization, and gender history.

00:00:33: And that's because I have a very special guest with me who's an expert in all three topics, Martina Kessel, Professor for Modern History and Gender History here at Bielefeld University.

00:00:43: Martina, thanks for joining me.

00:00:45: Thank you, Sabina, for having me here.

00:00:48: Martina brings a wealth of experience in these topics.

00:00:51: She's been a principal investigator and the speaker of a research training group on archives and also a principal investigator of the BGHS.

00:00:59: She's been the vice rector for internationalization and communication at Bielefeld University for four years and has spent quite some time at universities in the US, UK and Canada.

00:01:10: And she's a professor of gender history for more than twenty five years now.

00:01:14: But Martina, there's another reason why I wanted to talk to you about these topics, and that's your interest in the experience of time.

00:01:22: Many years ago, you did research on boredom and the experience of time in women's lives.

00:01:27: And that's where I want to enter into our talk today, not at the point of boredom, of course, but of the experience of time.

00:01:35: That means I want to make use of your expertise as a historian to find out in how far the topics doctor of supervision, internationalization, and gender history have changed in the last decades from your perspective.

00:01:47: What has perhaps remained the same, and what might be desirable for the future?

00:01:52: And I'd like to start with Doctoral Supervision.

00:01:55: You've been a supervisor of doctoral dissertations for more than twenty-five years now, and you've also been very active in the academic self-government of graduate training, for example in the BGHS.

00:02:06: What has changed most during this time from your perspective?

00:02:10: Yeah, thanks for the question.

00:02:12: This is, I think, a really important topic.

00:02:15: I mean, to my mind, I think two things have changed over the course of two decades.

00:02:21: On the one hand, PhD students have a lot more help today, structural and institutional help.

00:02:27: I mean, help in... writing a dissertation in discussing and when it's done in a context like the BGHS or another third party funding, there is a social and academic context that is being offered and they can take advantage of it or not if they like.

00:02:42: But so there is a lot more of sort of structural offers of support, which I really enjoy, which I think is really important.

00:02:51: But at the same time, and on the other hand, I think the second change that I have perceived is that are a lot more demands on PhDs at the same time.

00:03:01: So there is the expectation that they should write an article or maybe two during the dissertation that they should do a workshop or conference and that they should teach a class.

00:03:12: And from among these new demands, I personally find the expectation to teach a class very important because if They consider staying academia that is what they will spend their time with and they should find out as a PhD whether they like it or whether they can survive it you know with some training etc.

00:03:31: And so I think that's a very good thing to do because teaching demands totally different skills from somebody than doing research.

00:03:40: But the other demands, I'm always torn.

00:03:43: It's good practice, but given that funding is always limited and has a certain duration of time, and that it sometimes can be very difficult to write an article when you're not really sure where the dissertation is going.

00:03:56: So I tell my PhD students, yes, you should absolutely teach a class, but I'm not pushing any pressure on you to publish anything before you have the dissertation done.

00:04:10: I can understand that, but that might also be because of the certain disciplines.

00:04:16: I think in history writing a monograph at the end, and this is, let's say, the first real... publication from the PhD.

00:04:26: This is still quite common, I think.

00:04:30: For the people in sociology, it's quite different.

00:04:33: It's not only

00:04:34: that

00:04:35: some of them do a cumulative dissertation that only consists of articles, but also the others.

00:04:41: I think they are much more asked.

00:04:44: to do something like that.

00:04:46: And I have sometimes the impression that the doctor researchers infect each other a bit.

00:04:54: Yeah, so they come together in seminars also, they talk to each other, and then they have the impression perhaps that this is what you do.

00:05:04: You write an article.

00:05:06: Absolutely.

00:05:07: I think that's important because there's more peer culture there and they can help each other.

00:05:12: I'm all with you.

00:05:13: And of course, you have more journals.

00:05:15: You have one here at the BGHS yourself.

00:05:17: So it's easier to enter in a sense.

00:05:20: But sometimes, I mean, what I experienced in Lund, where I have this international cooperation, they have a conference each year to help students write a first article in English and they invite commentators for that.

00:05:31: So it's a structural approach in a sense, helping them to enter.

00:05:35: into the international context and that's great, but that depends on money, of

00:05:39: course.

00:05:41: And that's a good thing.

00:05:41: So I'm not saying they shouldn't do it.

00:05:44: I'm just as an advisor.

00:05:47: I'm lenient in that regard.

00:05:50: And when I have really excellent students, I say you should try it.

00:05:53: You could maybe try it, but I would support you if you did it once you've done the manuscript and then go for it.

00:06:00: So I'm just, I'm not pushing them.

00:06:03: I'm pushing them to teach.

00:06:06: But for the rest, yeah, it depends.

00:06:09: Yeah.

00:06:09: Yeah.

00:06:09: Yeah.

00:06:10: Yeah.

00:06:10: I mean, if you get, if you have a good opportunity to do that, then you should do it.

00:06:14: But if you have to search for an opportunity and, you know, find your way through it, then it might simply be.

00:06:26: time respected might be difficult, yeah.

00:06:29: And what impact does the development of structured graduate training like in the BGHS have from your perspective?

00:06:37: Well, I can tell differences.

00:06:40: I mean, just take the research class, for example, I mean, I have always offering that for once for a term for my own PhDs, we got together with read our chapters, etc.

00:06:51: And so that was great to get them together.

00:06:53: But this is a structured offer that happens every term.

00:06:56: And so they meet other PhDs.

00:06:59: And what I also like about that, they meet possibly with a teacher who is not their advisor.

00:07:05: And so the debate is a total different one maybe.

00:07:09: And they have to explain to other students, to other teachers what they're doing.

00:07:13: And I think that is a more neutral perspective.

00:07:16: Sometimes it offers a chance to to really think through what you're doing.

00:07:21: In addition to, you know, you have the theory classes, the methods classes.

00:07:25: I mean, that's I think that's fantastic to have.

00:07:27: Yeah.

00:07:28: Yeah.

00:07:28: Yeah.

00:07:29: And we have these annual progress reports by the doctoral researchers.

00:07:33: And sometimes some of them really note that.

00:07:36: and say, I appreciate that very much that I have the possibility to get to know other professors who could also be supervisors, but they do the things differently than my own supervisor does.

00:07:50: So they appreciate

00:07:52: that very much.

00:07:53: And what would be good steps for the future from your perspective in doctoral supervision?

00:07:59: Well, I think there's one change and I'm saying explicitly that I'm talking about history as you said before, you know, these things are differently done in different disciplines.

00:08:08: So I'm not talking about sociology, but first of all, I think, I mean, you mentioned that before, I think.

00:08:15: PhDs in history should still be expected to write a dissertation in a sense of a book, because that's a different challenge than writing articles, you know, to have like, two hundred and fifty pages of a coherent, maybe even elegantly structured thought process that doesn't repeat itself all the time, but also, you know, has enough of context to take.

00:08:37: So I hope that that will going to stay in history to write a book for a dissertation.

00:08:45: But what I would probably... Add is a structural feature.

00:08:49: I mean, so far we have the one to one relation with a primary advisor, and I don't want to cancel that, you know, and I have all of my PhDs write a protocol of the of the discussions that we have.

00:09:02: So it's them who put onto paper what they heard me say.

00:09:07: And that I find that very important.

00:09:10: I read it.

00:09:10: And then we can, you know, if I think, oh, no, I didn't say this, you know, or I'm sorry, I said this in a sense I can.

00:09:16: know, I can get back to them, but it's their perception, what I'm saying.

00:09:20: But what I would do, and we have that abroad in English language countries, but we also, for example, have the LMU Munich, they add a committee that is appointed by the department for each PhD.

00:09:34: And it's this committee that, in a sense, as a structural feature, sort of accompanies the PhD next to the primary advisor.

00:09:43: And that means, for example, that after a year and a have that person expected to turn in a chapter just as an example.

00:09:50: And then it's the committee that discusses that with the person.

00:09:55: And then in the end, in a sense, the dissertation is turned into that committee.

00:10:00: And it might even be that the primary advisor is not.

00:10:03: they write the first evaluation, but they might not be part of the committee.

00:10:08: So what I'm saying is that on the one hand, a committee and a structure that adds a layer of neutrality.

00:10:16: And I'm meaning that in a sense, you know, I am getting positively biased towards my PhDs.

00:10:22: You know, that is almost always the case.

00:10:25: Because I see what they're doing, what they counter, how they overcome obstacles, how they progress.

00:10:30: You know, I'm so happy that I'm always, you know, you become lenient.

00:10:35: And you know, that's one thing.

00:10:38: So the other thing is I always worry after each discussion with PhDs, did I overlook question.

00:10:44: Or did I ask a question that doesn't really help?

00:10:47: And so when you have a structured committee there, you know, that would be a great help.

00:10:54: And it would also mean that the department recognizes PhDs as a part of the department.

00:11:02: That's really right.

00:11:03: Yeah, we had.

00:11:04: we had a discussion about that lately in the doctoral committee in the Faculty of Sociology.

00:11:10: And the question was, How can we organize that if you have a committee, for example, of four persons or four professors, and all four should have some expertise on the dissertation topic.

00:11:27: So how is this to be organized?

00:11:30: Well, I personally would say that there's no need to have knowledge of the topic itself.

00:11:35: I mean, what for history?

00:11:37: I would suggest or recommend is that it would be maybe three professors who work in the same period.

00:11:43: So if it's a dissertation in modern history, I think I would prefer to have a committee in modern history because that is the field they're working in.

00:11:51: But you wouldn't have to really know anything about the topic.

00:11:55: I mean, I'm doing a lot of teaching and advising.

00:11:59: grading and topics that I've never researched.

00:12:01: Yeah,

00:12:02: that's right.

00:12:02: And of course, I mean, you, you know, you learn, learn it, and you sort of pick up a lot.

00:12:09: But for this committee, that wouldn't be necessary.

00:12:12: It's rather maybe also discussing the problem.

00:12:16: Well, why do you find it difficult to to write faster in a sense.

00:12:20: But, you know, in discussions in our department, we always have people discussing topics where there are no experts and it's always good discussions.

00:12:29: And the students can decide what they do with it.

00:12:31: That's a lot of responsibility, but they don't have to answer every question.

00:12:36: You know, I'd rather find it, it's a more sort of structured acceptance because, I mean, abroad, the case is that people after their PhD enter the academic career if they stay in academia.

00:12:49: And that means, in a sense, in Toronto, but also at the LSE, I realize that the personnel of the professors recognize them as potential colleagues

00:12:59: to be.

00:13:00: Whereas in Germany, BA and MA students are defined as our responsibility and then Postdocs are perceived as potential future colleagues.

00:13:10: We still have in mind, in a sense.

00:13:12: Of course, we have junior professors where it's different, but it hasn't really structurally, to my mind, entered academic mentality that PhDs are.

00:13:22: possible future colleagues.

00:13:28: And the doctoral researchers themselves, they also get practice in defending their argumentation and so on in front of a group of professors, not only one supervisor, could also, as you said, say, okay, this person, this is not perfect was what he or she does.

00:13:50: But he or she has made great progress and has really made a long way until now.

00:13:58: And so, but they have to, they have to defend what they are thinking in front of other persons.

00:14:07: Yeah,

00:14:07: I think so.

00:14:08: And they might feel more a part of the history department and it might also help, you know.

00:14:15: People, of course, would have to be nice, I'm saying.

00:14:19: But it helps to understand that every book that we write is a process.

00:14:26: And it might help to, if we set it up in the correct way, that it's a help and not a pressure.

00:14:33: Of course, it would be a bit of a pressure, but then people have limited amount of money and time to do a PhD.

00:14:39: There are so many pressures.

00:14:42: That

00:14:42: would be all right, I think.

00:14:45: I think

00:14:46: it would be more divisive help.

00:14:53: I would like to come to the next topic, which is internationalization.

00:14:57: You spent

00:14:57: quite some time abroad during your career.

00:15:00: and you also were in charge of internationalizing Bielefeld University during your time as vice rector.

00:15:06: So you have been both, so to say, a subject of internationalization and an object of internationalization as well.

00:15:13: The BGHS started in two thousand eight with a proportion of twenty percent of international doctoral researchers and this has grown to thirty six percent by now.

00:15:23: I think the BGHS is really very successful in this regard, but I have the impression that internationalization increased almost everywhere in the university.

00:15:32: What do

00:15:32: you find most striking with regard to the process of internationalization?

00:15:39: Well, first of all, I'm really impressed with the development of the BGIS.

00:15:42: I mean, for the humanities, that is an enormous amount and you're working and we are all working to keep it there.

00:15:50: I think, I mean, having this appointment as sort of the vice president for internationalization, which the office was established then, which meant that internationalization should go from a simple buzzword to a structure to be implemented, you know, as a mainstreaming thing.

00:16:10: that should happen everywhere and anywhere.

00:16:14: And I do think that overall in the last fourteen years, since I was appointed, that has happened to some extent.

00:16:21: the BGHS, of course, is an example of that.

00:16:25: And there has been made an effort to have more English language classes, which of course is mostly on the PhD level.

00:16:30: There's still some opposition on the BA and MA level, which is sometimes understandable, sometimes not.

00:16:35: And I do think they have been made even more efforts to help students go abroad with Erasmus, et cetera.

00:16:42: And they are structured offers for PhDs to have, you know, conferences with international actors and so on.

00:16:48: But what I find problematic, and I mean, in the BGHS we have experienced this that sort of structures like this which are truly important are being set up and they are financed for a certain period of time and then the money stops because the interest of the excellence initiative says oh we've done this you know we're going elsewhere and then the universities have to come up with that or the BGHS.

00:17:10: and that of course is very difficult because you do need money especially if you want to draw international PhDs too.

00:17:20: to Bielefeld.

00:17:21: And so I would wish, you know, that could use a lot more sort of continuity, short continuity, at least for a certain period of time.

00:17:31: So the offers that you're trying to establish have a chance to flower because you can't see results after a year.

00:17:40: Yeah, yeah, that's right.

00:17:42: This is what we experience all the time that you need, you know, you need.

00:17:46: sometimes you need four years or five years until a program really, really works out.

00:17:53: Yeah, it's really important to have the security that this will be there in two years as well.

00:18:01: Yeah.

00:18:01: Is there something you wanted to achieve in particular in your time as vice rector, which came true, or which hasn't come true yet?

00:18:10: Well, I learned on the job to be pragmatic.

00:18:14: But I think one important thing that I try to establish as a form of understanding was that internationalization as a structure only works in the university when it becomes independent from individual people.

00:18:30: Because internationalization, as you mentioned before, I mean, almost all of my colleagues do it, you know, we all go abroad and we have international.

00:18:39: So it's there as an inherent feature of research.

00:18:42: search, I think.

00:18:43: But that's important to make clear that it needs continuously functioning structures to become independent if somebody goes away or somebody new comes so, etc.

00:18:52: What I did was to write the first strategy for internationalization for the university.

00:18:59: And I'm not saying it was good, but I'm saying that you need to have a text that is sort of, you know, the line of thinking for everybody and then you can improve it.

00:19:10: And so that was important as a basis for discussion.

00:19:15: I can't really say whether the realization that internationalization means needs structural continuity, whether that has really functioned.

00:19:24: Because, you know, when the money gets tight, it seems to me that some of these things are cut off.

00:19:32: as the first maybe thing that would be nice to have as long as we have the money.

00:19:37: but once we don't have that and I'm speaking about very small sums here sometimes so you have to still I think work on that that it is not something that is nice to have but really crucial to integrate.

00:19:51: And I can only say, I mean, I learned in the vice vector position, I got to know all the other fields and I learned from the natural sciences so much.

00:20:00: I mean, mathematics is inherently international.

00:20:03: They just stared at me and said, yes, we are.

00:20:05: And I said, yes, you are.

00:20:07: So, you know, I worked with people a lot who do it, just do it and to invest the money for that.

00:20:15: But I am.

00:20:17: not so sure whether that is really the case for all fields.

00:20:21: And of course, all fields have different challenges, but it would be nice to realize that it needs a structured funding.

00:20:27: Yeah, yeah, that's right.

00:20:28: And I have to say that I worked with your strategy very much because

00:20:33: it was so

00:20:34: yeah, it was really a structured program, let's say, and it reminded me of all the different aspects of internationalization.

00:20:44: And also the BGHS was very active in some of the basics.

00:20:49: So the things with the, you know, with all the forms and templates the universities have and the regulations and so on.

00:20:56: And we always said, we have to have it in English, please also publish this one in English and so on.

00:21:04: And this was really, this is was something in ways where I can say, you don't need five years, you need ten years to achieve that.

00:21:12: Yeah.

00:21:13: Until right.

00:21:15: the people from the university administration sent the important emails also in English.

00:21:24: I mean, this sounds really sometimes.

00:21:26: it sounds ridiculous, but this is really something that takes

00:21:30: time.

00:21:31: It does take time.

00:21:32: And of course, it's a challenge that American and English universities don't have.

00:21:36: They just use English full stop.

00:21:38: But universities like us that need to get into the English language context without, you know, seeing it as the only one that's important, we still need to do it.

00:21:48: And I think they have been strides forward, but of course it takes time.

00:21:53: Yeah.

00:21:54: And again, the question, what would be good next steps in internationalization from your perspective?

00:22:01: Well, we have this structural level, we have the financial level that we talked about, but sometimes it seems to me and I find it very hard to organize that in thoughts in a sense, but it seems to me that it's still a question of mentality in the sense of that.

00:22:23: I am just saying this plainly.

00:22:26: I don't work this through fully, but I lived abroad in all stages as a student, as a fellow, as a researcher, as a teacher, and I learned by doing this, how totally difficult it is and how different from just going raw to a conference to live and to think in a different language and to live in a really different academic system, even if it's a language that you're fluent in or that you have visited, you know, the country visited so many times.

00:22:57: But it really means something to organize your academic work in a different language and in a different culture.

00:23:03: And I think what It seems to me you know all my colleagues do that.

00:23:09: in a sense, I assume that, but it might be good to have more discussions about how really difficult it is for personnel coming from abroad for PhD students, but also for international colleagues whom we might want to draw to Germany, that it's not just moving to the country, but like an English sentence is organized differently from a German, like an English text and book is differently organized from a German text.

00:23:36: it does mean something.

00:23:37: And one thing that I particularly learned by teaching is that the very way of how you express critique and consent is totally different in German, in a German academic context, and in an English language context.

00:23:52: And that is even different between Canada, the US, and England.

00:23:57: And there you have... you know, you're dealing with students really from everywhere in the world.

00:24:03: And so the topics you teach are received differently, but the very interacting in these academic cultures is different from what we do here.

00:24:14: And sometimes I found that very difficult because in all these English language contexts, it's very, it's considered bad taste to tell you how to do it.

00:24:22: But when you do it wrong, you know, you're the person out.

00:24:25: So you really have to think along.

00:24:27: Okay, how do I do this?

00:24:29: And I sometimes really talk to the students because they were most open to tell me how they experienced it at home, so to speak.

00:24:36: Because my colleagues would never say they, you know, they would say, oh, you're doing fine.

00:24:40: It's perfect.

00:24:41: And then when I did something, they kind of looked at me and said, what are you doing?

00:24:46: You know, you have to navigate that.

00:24:47: But I think it's this.

00:24:50: mentality of really understanding what it means to navigate internationality is that might still be discussed at least a little bit.

00:25:02: Yeah, and I think.

00:25:04: I have a lot of admiration for our doctoral researchers who come, for example, from China or from India or from some African countries or from Latin America.

00:25:18: They come here.

00:25:19: They have perhaps they have never been abroad before.

00:25:24: And then they are here and they really Start a new life and and they sometimes they struggle but they most of them

00:25:35: manage

00:25:35: in a way and I have a lot of admiration for them.

00:25:38: I have to I have to say because I have never been abroad for a longer period.

00:25:46: So yeah, I find this admirable really and I I would.

00:25:53: I would like academia or German academia or German universities to appreciate their perspectives and their experiences they bring with them a bit more.

00:26:07: I think that would be great because it's so interesting when you're talking to them and about their really very special experiences and perspectives.

00:26:19: Absolutely.

00:26:20: And with that, we both don't mean to lower our expectations.

00:26:26: So, you know, they all fit in.

00:26:27: And I have only met international PhDs here who would have liked to stay, who did continue and extend their stay.

00:26:35: So they really appreciate what they have here.

00:26:38: But my own experience, and I've really sort of I lived abroad you know I also lived in France and that was again very different from England or North America but I've been living there for a year or longer and I've always felt so appreciated and people you know they I mean they invited me there they wanted me to have there and they really expressed their appreciation.

00:27:05: of having somebody from a German academic background and discussing with me.

00:27:09: And, you know, I sort of had to overcome the bureaucratic difficulties, etc.

00:27:14: That's just the same like here.

00:27:16: But I felt appreciated and welcomed.

00:27:19: And I always had open ears, in a sense, when we discussed about how we do things differently.

00:27:25: And I can't talk, of course, for PhDs.

00:27:29: But I think I you know, the short time I'm here, I would like to, you know, discuss with them how they experience academia differently in Germany.

00:27:40: And I think there has been changed a lot.

00:27:43: They are made welcome, but I still make, you know, I have to make myself realize what they are actually achieving when they're doing a PhD here.

00:27:56: And that's immense.

00:27:56: Yeah.

00:27:57: Well, and now let's turn to our third topic, gender history.

00:28:02: When I started to think about the relations of women and men during my studies in the early nineteen nineties, this research area was still called women's studies.

00:28:11: And two disciplines seem to be most important, linguistics and history.

00:28:16: And then the differentiation of sex and gender came, social constructivism and the idea that gender isn't something we have, but we do.

00:28:24: And from my perspective as a social scientist, it seems that sociology became something like the lead discipline in gender studies.

00:28:32: How do

00:28:32: you see this?

00:28:36: That's a challenging question!

00:28:40: Well, I'm a historian through and through, but... When I look over, I'm just thinking about what texts I'm using to teach and that's of course the majority of is from history, but I also always include some texts from sociology.

00:28:58: I can't really say whether sociology is a leading field in there.

00:29:05: Because as I said, I'm a historian.

00:29:10: I always start to argue with sociology texts, which as I do with history texts.

00:29:16: it could very well be.

00:29:17: I mean, when I think about the English language research that I know, history is absolutely a leading field.

00:29:25: But that might be the case that in Germany, it is a bit different because in Germany, for reasons that would need to be discussed, gender history has been taken up by certain fields, but not so much by other fields.

00:29:42: I don't know why, but we'd have to discuss that in a sense.

00:29:48: I can't even name fields in a sense.

00:29:51: But for Germany, I wish it was a leading field, but I can't say for certain.

00:30:01: although there's so much excellent research.

00:30:03: So the question would be, I mean, how do you define a leading field?

00:30:06: Yeah, yeah, that's right.

00:30:08: That's right.

00:30:11: So nowadays we have study programs in gender history and professors and institutes of gender studies and gender studies as a discipline even.

00:30:19: But this situation seems fragile under current political circumstances.

00:30:24: And some gender researchers fear this could be taken away by politics.

00:30:28: How do you evaluate the situation?

00:30:33: I see that as a real danger, yes, that is the case.

00:30:40: Whereas I would add that it's not just politics that is doing that, but it's, let me be very plain, it's a field of history itself.

00:30:50: And it seems to me that, and maybe just one sentence before, I mean, I don't define as a historian of gender, because I define as a historian of modern history.

00:31:01: And I've entered gender as a category in my second book, and self taught.

00:31:07: in a sense, because I never met gender history during my studies or during my PhD.

00:31:12: And in a sense, I'm always kind of inside and outside, you know, I'm looking at a bit at it, but it seems to me, yes, right.

00:31:19: It has been established over a course of decades and we have classes and we have people but to my mind it has never been unconditionally.

00:31:32: been accepted at least not in German historiography.

00:31:36: and that is a difference to other national contexts that I see other academic contexts You know and sometimes it's I mean just basic opposition that might not be articulated as such And very often it comes up again when the money is tightening and when it becomes a budget question and then it is the thing that could be made superfluous as the first.

00:32:00: so it's still kind of an assumption it's nice to have if there is you know abundance of possibilities but if not it is less important than others other approaches and it is an approach not just a theme.

00:32:17: yeah.

00:32:18: so you think it's also within academia, not only outside.

00:32:24: Absolutely.

00:32:26: Absolutely.

00:32:27: And I mean, you know, it's a very simple thing, but people tend to say that, well, aren't we all doing it now?

00:32:37: And so we don't need a professorship for that, which also means you don't need any specific expertise.

00:32:44: And I don't think that anybody would ever say that about economic history or about even something as, you know, broadly distributed as social history or anything else.

00:32:57: But it is seen as something that you can just pick up on the go and then everybody is doing it.

00:33:03: And no, there is no unconditional acceptance in German historiography.

00:33:09: Yeah.

00:33:10: So we all have gender.

00:33:11: So we all are experts in gender.

00:33:15: That might be an even worse methodological approach.

00:33:18: Yes.

00:33:20: No, they're saying explicitly we all and probably they would mean we all, you know, look at also women when we talk about the labor market.

00:33:29: Something like that.

00:33:33: And so what's your guess or your wish for the future?

00:33:40: Well, I would hope that maybe there would be a more honest debate about this and an argument.

00:33:53: why say for example the history of nationalism or economic history is in itself inherently more important than gender?

00:34:06: because by teaching myself and by using gender history that in itself developed tremendously over the last thirty years I mean I came to realize that the very structure, the very construction of the modern is being done with very particular constructions of gender, constructions of race, and constructions of otherness that result from that, and that the very understanding of modern society misses something if we don't take that into account.

00:34:40: And that doesn't mean that other approaches are less important.

00:34:44: I would just like to know why it's always expected from gender.

00:34:49: historians to enter their thinking into so-called main history or sort of general history and whereas people who define themselves with arguments I would like to know a sort of general history why they don't have to take that seriously.

00:35:07: and another thing that to my mind could be maybe drawn out into the open a little bit that is connected with what I said is that gender theory to my mind is not still not really considered as theory.

00:35:22: Whereas, you know, somebody was using Lumen, somebody is using Foucault, even if you don't like these people, it's considered theoretical.

00:35:29: But when you do gender history, it's, it's rarely to my mind, but unspokenly so, you know, recognized on the same level as just as equally important, or maybe, you know, in some instances, something we shouldn't do without.

00:35:47: And so I would like to have a more open debate about that, which is difficult.

00:35:51: And if you can't have that, I would have like to have a discussion, for example, about take a phenomenon like capitalism, you know, that we have maybe a seminar about capitalism and then check what do we see and what do we not see by using sort of the approach of racial capitalism by gendering capitalism by discussing capitalism in the context of the anthropocene without using gender.

00:36:22: You know, with each of these approaches, you can see something that you can't see with another approach.

00:36:28: But then we compare and then we can see, well, how would it work, you know, to learn from each approach and take it into account.

00:36:36: And that would really have to work on sort of on eye level acceptance, that each of these approaches can contribute something worthwhile and that we might have to argue at the end, why didn't we have to take it into account?

00:36:53: And that, you know, is something to say about all approaches, but gender history has been changing so much.

00:37:01: And I mean, it's always, to my mind, it has been black feminist historians who developed intersectionality.

00:37:07: which it... You know, it's really a contribution that is utterly important.

00:37:13: And I think in German history has not been taken seriously enough in the sense of that we really should do German history.

00:37:20: Whether you are doing gender history or not doesn't matter, but we should really read it more in terms of critical whiteness, which is rarely, rarely done.

00:37:29: And if so, it's usually done by people who are trained in gender history.

00:37:34: And so I think they are really methodologically but also theoretically offers that will disappear.

00:37:41: So before we come to the end of this talk, I have one rather personal question.

00:37:47: By the end of this term, you're going to retire and what does this feel like?

00:37:53: Yes, I'm going to retire

00:37:54: and I'm

00:37:56: totally happy and it feels like exactly the right moment.

00:38:01: I thought the other day I taught my first class at the age of twenty one as a teaching assistant in the US.

00:38:07: And I think I've done my share.

00:38:11: Yes, it's fine.

00:38:12: And I'm very, very grateful for this time.

00:38:16: I mean, I come from a context where... Let me put it this way girls still today aren't expected to become professors and so in a sense everything was a surplus after I after I passed high school and could you know take myself abroad and and do everything else.

00:38:33: so that is just.

00:38:35: I'm totally thankful for that and I much look forward to finishing the book I'm writing now and to write more books after that and chapters and articles.

00:38:46: I really have like tons of ideas in the back of my mind.

00:38:51: And I'm also, I really like your question, how do you feel?

00:38:54: Because usually I get the question, do you feel nostalgic already?

00:38:57: And when I say no, the immediate question is, oh, you're cutting off the days on the calendar.

00:39:02: And when I say no, people look perplexed and run out of questions.

00:39:06: And so coming back to temporality, you know, I just totally enjoy the present and still look forward to the future.

00:39:13: And that has to do with the students I have this term.

00:39:16: I mean, I'm really grateful.

00:39:17: I have a great research class.

00:39:18: I have wonderful.

00:39:20: but really stunning are my master students.

00:39:23: And it's small classes, but they are just so much fun and it's just wonderful to work with them.

00:39:30: And I just hope that they have a democratic future in academia and our society that is theirs.

00:39:39: Thanks a lot.

00:39:40: This was a very, very good last sentence, I think.

00:39:44: Thank you.

00:39:45: Martina, I'm so glad that you were here, that you talked to me and I wish you all the best for the future and I hope to read more from you.

00:39:56: Thank you, Sabina.

00:39:58: Good luck to you.

00:39:58: I'm really grateful.

00:39:59: Martina shared her broad experience with us.

00:40:03: And I think she has some wonderful ideas how to improve academia regarding doctoral supervision, internationalization and gender history.

00:40:11: I think we have to think much more about how to make people feel welcome and how to really appreciate the experiences and skills they bring, even or especially if they seem unfamiliar to us.

00:40:22: There's quite a number of other episodes of our podcast dealing with doctoral supervision and international.

00:40:29: Perhaps you'd like to listen to them as well.

00:40:31: You find the links in our show notes.

00:40:34: If you enjoyed today's episode, please share it with your colleagues and friends.

00:40:38: And as always, we'd like to hear about your thoughts.

00:40:41: If you have any questions, comments or suggestions for the future topics, send us an email at bghs at uni-bielefeld.de.

00:40:51: Thank you for tuning in and until next time, optimism!

00:40:55: Have faith in yourself and make the best of the chances and challenges on your academic journey.