A professorship for a thousand years… that is how one could briefly summon up the magnitude and challenges the department of medieval history is faced with at the university of Oldenburg, namely: to represent the epoch in its full range. Alternating our curriculum holds courses on the early, the high and the late middle ages. The choice of our key aspects is oriented upon pursuing the principle of new research approaches and to offer a possible broad spread spectrum of avenues to medieval history, which reaches from constitutional history of the middle ages to the medieval cultural sciences.

The research emphasis of our department members, however, becomes clearer by taking a little closer look at their completed and current works. Here, the accent lies – with respect to time – on the high and the late middle ages; thematically in the field of economic and social history, church history and cultural history. Among other things objects of studies are: handy craft and industrial products; dimensions and options of cultural and technical transfer, processes of social mobility within the medieval framework of society; interaction of social and juridical change, as well as significance and forms of cultural practices, how they are expressed in the arrangement of every day life and festive days, in strategies of conflict resolution and rules of communication.