Why was the coinage of the first Piasts less developed than the coinage of neighboring areas in East Central Europe? What does the quality and quantity of money production tell us about how the state functioned and the mechanisms through which it exercised power? Last but not least, why was mintage even(?) necessary? The last question may initially seem trivial. However, it is more important than previously assumed. Recent studies show  that the use of silver as a standard of value in Mesopotamia does not trace back to the emergence of markets. On the contrary, precious metals mainly constituted a unit of value in the administration and were used for tax payment.
Starting from this overarching question, the research project contextualizes spatial differences in development within Europe in the 11th–13th centuries and analyzes how monetary patterns from western parts of the continent were adapted in Piast Poland. It also examines how this impacted societal modernization. Competing imitation was an appropriate mechanism for facilitating transfers of knowledge. This way, dukes and kings could accumulate competences that allowed them to increase revenue and strengthen their position when competing with other rulers. The aim of this project is to compare the Piast lands with the Holy Roman Empire by  involving a wider geographical perspective, including areas between Prague and Alt-Lübeck (the Slavic settlement at Liubice).

This project focuses on the urban spaces of late socialism, examining the interactions between power structures and marginalized groups across space and time. The central premise is that urban spaces reflect dominant values and the state’s desired social organization. The study explores how state power was projected onto and exerted control over such urban environments.
Socialist cities were designed as embodiments of an ideal society, yet reality often diverged from modernist planning ideals. This project investigates the gap between socialism’s ideological aspirations and it’s historical realities. A key issue is understanding how people excluded from the official urban framework interacted with and responded to state power. The study centers around the experiences and actions of marginalized groups, such as sex workers, queer individuals, and those involved in illicit trade. These groups developed their own strategies to navigate, survive, and operate within the urban space . Their interactions and conflicts with state authorities shed light on the mechanisms of social control and the acts of resistance that emerged.
The study offers new insights into the dynamics of power relations and social interactions within urban spaces. It contributes to our understanding of how ideological visions clashed with practical realities and how marginalized groups devised strategies to navigate the tension between conformity and resistance. Ultimately, the project enhances our knowledge of the social and political mechanisms at play in late socialist cities and how they continued to develope. 

The former East Prussian, now Polish region of Warmia (Ermland in German) is both a prototypical and a very specific region. It differs little from surrounding regions in terms of natural landscape, economy, and settlement history, but within its own borders Warmia is extremely heterogeneous. In this respect, its historical development is particularly apt for macro- and micro-historical studies on regionalization processes. This projects pays particular attention to the thesis of Warmia as a ‘region without a region’, which is unique in regionalization research. The thesis is not only based on an understanding informed by cultural anthropology of regions as socially constructed entities fr, but also accounts for the special case in which the material frame of reference for regionalization, that is tying the region to a defined space, was severely changed or even destroyed several times by political upheavals and forced migration. Nevertheless, the Warmia region persisted both as an imagined space as well as a material space, even with changed reference groups and altered cultural references. Against this background, the project promises new insights into the structures of mentality formation in interdependence with space, which should give new impetus to this field of research.

The project therefore in detail with the cultural, religious, and economic structures in early modern Warmia and the mentalities they create in order to describe and analyze the conflict-laden regionalization processes of Warmia in the ‘Prussian period’. The changes after the upheaval of 1945 are interpreted as a continuation of these processes under completely different circumstances. Due to the extraordinary longue durée of the regionalization processes, among other things, Warmia proves to be a region that is particularly valuable as a reference point for research into other regions and supports the cross-epochal approach of the GHI Warsaw.

This project examines different conventions and strategies of representation in the duchies of the Upper Oder region during a transition period starting from the Late Middle Ages and continuing on into  the Early Modern Period. These duchies (such as Opole/Oppeln or Cieszy/Teschen) provide an interesting area of research due to the territorial fragmentation of the various dynasty branches (e.g. in the case of the Piast Dynasty) and their later reunification. Other aspects of interest are the changes of denominations and the re-establishment of Catholicism before the Thirty Years War. 

The study focuses on the conventions of representation adhered to by the local elites and the instrumentalization of artwork in this context. How can court culture and the corresponding strategies of patronage be reconstructed in these dynamically changing regimes? We can assume that the tension between supra-regional and regional models had an influence on these strategies. However, the specifics of these strategies in the individual duchies have yet to be explored. This study analyzes a variety of  visual art forms ranging from architecture, paintings, and sculptures (especially sepulchral art) to extant works of decorative art, in so far as methods from the field of Visual Culture Studies (Bildwissenschaften) can be applied to the latter.

This project centers around Jewish merchants working within the Polish-Lithuanian Rzeczpospolita in the territories of the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania (From Vitebsk and Minsk over Dünaburg until Wilna and Kaunas) throughout territorial partition processes and the periods following these, up until the beginning of Railroad construction. How did the separation of territories and changing state affiliations affect the merchant's business relations, activities and relationships? 

This study analyzes examples of “Raumliche Praxis“ (Henri Lefebvre) and illustrates to what degree everyday economic spaces evolved within the observed timeframe. It follows how the representations of space changed, meaning how and in what way images of the northern territories of the former Polish-Lithuanian Rzeczpospolita shifted, more specifically what the process associated with changing these images looked like. Did novel configurations and connections develop, and how far did their sphere of influence reach?

The goal of the project is to deconstruct the reigning narrative that the Polish-Lithuanian rzeczpospolita seamlessly transitioned to an area of Jewish settlement and to review how the Jewish figures this project centers around were aware of, understood, and interpreted these changes. It also addresses how they faced challenges brought on by territorial changes. This way, a noticeable historiographic gap is addressed.