The ‘Middle Ages’ is a concept coined by the humanists, who described the period from around 500 to 1500 in Central and Western Europe as a dark, intermediate age between the glorious Antiquity and the Renaissance. Since then, the Middle Ages have served as a canvas onto which to project either grim or idealised visions of the past – a phenomenon that has repeatedly shaped academic research. Engaging with medieval sources therefore always requires us to reflect on older perceptions of the Middle Ages and research concepts – such as the outdated notion of a uniform ‘feudal system’ or the ‘three-estates society’ – and to approach the historical material with a fresh perspective. This also applies to Islamic history, which is likewise researched and taught in our department (albeit to a lesser extent than European history). The ‘prohibition of images in Islam’, for example, was never enforced absolutely, as demonstrated by the depiction of a bathing scene in the summer palace of the Umayyad caliphs.

The challenge of bridging the gap between medieval and modern ways of thinking and categories is what makes studying this period so fascinating, and it shapes teaching and research in our department: Even though we deal with a variety of topics, periods and places, we always take care to set aside the often homogenising perspectives on the Middle Ages that originated in the early modern period and the modern era. This opens up a view of multifaceted societies whose ways of life and thought cannot simply be reduced to a single common denominator.

In our research, for example, we examine ritualised conflicts (Sarah Neumann) and travel accounts (Anne Sacher, Almut Höfert). A key focus of the department is on gender history, such as the history of masculinities (Anne Sacher, Mirko Menser) and our ‘Gentes und nationes’ project ( Laura Kampelmann, Almut Höfert and Anja Rathmann-Lutz, who is now based in Erfurt), which investigates how collectives were gendered from the 15th century onwards.

Our latest area of focus is the regional history of the Oldenburg region and north-west Germany, where there is still much to explore regarding the Middle Ages – here, Cornelius Lauke and Almut Höfert work primarily with historical documents.