Sommer, Christopher, Dr
Contact
Institute of Material Culture (» Postal address)
Lectures
Summer term 2026
Winter term 2025 / 2026
Sommer, Christopher, Dr
Historian, museum scientist
Field of specialisation
- Museum studies
- Qualitative visitor research
- Military history (20th century and pre-modern period)
- Immigration history (specialising in New Zealand)
Museum sector
- Cultural history museums, national museums, regional institutions (private and local museums)
Biographical data
Dr Christopher Sommer has been a research associate at the Institute of Material Culture since 2018.
His doctorate on the topic 'Musealisation of Immigration' took him to New Zealand, which he successfully completed in 2016.
His current research focus is on the representation of war and violence in military history exhibitions as part of the DFG project 'The Tamed War' and the effects of digitalisation on university teaching.
Third-party funded projects
| Since 2024 | DFG | The continuation of war by digital means - The transformation of military history exhibitions and shifting visitor perceptions through extended reality |
| 2020 - 2024 | DFG | The tamed war ꟷ The representation and perception of war and its effects in dioramas and through large exhibits |
| 2018-2020 | MWK | Quality Plus - Digital Literacy at the Material Culture Centre |
| 2019-2020 | MWK | Innovation Plus - Uni Action |
Supervised theses
MA Museum and exhibition
- Not just looking. Strategies and concepts of museum work at the Oldenburger Computer-Museum e.V.
- Memory aid or nice gimmick? An empirical study on the effectiveness of hands-on stations and interactive apps at the Küstenmuseum Wilhelmshaven.
- The voice of the visitor - Lego® Serious Play® as an experimental method of visitor research in museums.
- Digital revolution in the museum? An analysis of the self-image of museums and employees in the context of the pandemic
- Serious Game meets Museum: A redefinition of exhibitions in the age of serious games.
- 'Understanding' the Middle Ages: An analysis of child-orientated museum exhibitions.
Conference contributions
| 7/2023 | Memory Studies Association Conference, lecture, Newcastle, England: The immersive diminutive - Dioramas at the military history museum. |
| 9/2022 | RAF Museum Conference, Lecture: London, England: Building perceptions - Exploring representations of aerial warfare at the German Air Force Museum via LEGO Serious Play. |
| 7/2021 | Wounds and Warfare, online lecture, Auckland, New Zealand: Visceral Visuals: The Representation of Wounds in a Museum Context. |
| 09/2020 | 14th International Conference on Game Based Learning, Online Poster Presentation, London, England: Game on! Enhancing Tertiary Student Engage-ment Through Co-development of Interactive Treasure Hunts. |
| 10/2019 | 13th International Conference on Game Based Learning, Poster Presentation, Odense, Denmark: X Marks the Spot: A Student-Developed Treasure-Hunt on the Digitisation of Knowledge Production. |
| 11/2018 | The First World War at Sea Conference, London, England: The scale of war: Museum visitors' perception of the Great War's naval military history through scale models, museum ships and large scale exhibits. |
| 10/2018 | Working Group Military History. Conflict landscapes. Military history in interdisciplinary dialogue conference, Osnabrück: Der gezähmte Krieg - Die Repräsentation und Wahrnehmung von Krieg und seinen Auswirkungen in musealen Dioramen und durch Großexponate. |
| 07/2018 | Storytelling Conference, Ipswich, England: Wartime (Hi)stories. Dioramic WWI Museum Narratives. |
| 12/2017 | Progressive Connexions. Migration and Diasporas Conference, Vienna, Austria: Tugging at the Heart Strings - Is affective exhibition design able to effect change in museum visitors' perception of refugees and migrants? |
| 10/2016 | What Do Contentious Objects Want? Political, Epistemic and Artistic Cultures of Return Conference, Florence, Italy: Of Phrenology, reconciliation and veneration - An object biography of the life cast of Māori chief Tangatahara. |
| 04/2016 | Museums Aotearoa Graduate Research Symposium on Museum-centred Studies Conference, Auckland, New Zealand: Tugging at the heart strings - New Zealand migration exhibitions and affect. |
| 12/2012 | Migration, Memory and Place Conference, Copenhagen, Denmark: Here to stay ꟷ The representation of place identity, rootedness and belonging in regional and national museums in New Zealand. |
| 11/2012 | Place and Displacement Conference, Melbourne, Australia: A place apart? - Representations of place identity and displacement in New Zealand museums. |
| 11/2011 | Perspectives on Power Conference, Brisbane, Australia: Empowered communities? Power plays in the representation of immigration in regional and national museums in New Zealand. |
| 11/2011 | The History of Migration in Museums Conference, Clermont-Ferrand, France: From 'white' settler stories to a multicultural paradigm - The influence of changing policies on the representation of immigration in regional and national museums in New Zealand. |
Publications
Representation of Military History in Museums / Visitor Studies
Wellington, Jennifer, & Sommer, Christopher: Flesh and iron: historical and contemporary perspectives on woundedness in war exhibitions. In: Critical Military Studies, 11(4), 2025, 449-465. https://doi.org/10.1080/23337486.2025.2480005.
Sommer, Christopher: The Gargantuan and the Diminutive - War at the Museum. In: Public History Weekly 10 (2022) Issue, DOI: dx.doi.org/10.1515/phw-2022-20329.
Sommer, Christopher: 'Rüstkammern' - Präsentation von Waffen und Rüstungen der Frühen Neuzeit im Museum. 2nd edition. Studies in Material Culture Volume 5. Institute of Material Culture University of Oldenburg 2022.
Sommer, Christopher: Kriegsgespinste - Textile stagings of proximity to death and narratives of vulnerability in war exhibitions. The military history museum as a forum for discussion. In: Haller, Melanie, Helmers, Traute, Mallon, Stefanie (eds.): Death and the thing. Textile materials in the context of transience. Münster: Waxmann 2020, 249-268.
Representation of Migration in Museums / Visitor Studies
Sommer, Christopher: Centre Stage to Display Case - Exhibiting Chinese Immigration in New Zealand. In: Arrocha, Williams, Xeni, Eleni (eds.): Migrations and Diasporas. Struggling Between Inclusion and Exclusion. Emerald 2023, 201-219. https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-83797-146-620231013
Sommer, Christopher: Of Phrenology, Reconciliation and Veneration - Exhibiting the Repatriated Life Cast of Māori Chief Takatahara at the Akaroa Museum. In: Bodenstein, Felicity, Oţoiu, Damiana, Troelenberg, Eva-Maria (eds.): Contested Holdings: Public and Private Collections in Political, Epistemic and Artistic Processes of Return. Berghahn 2022, 96-116. https://doi.org/10.3167/9781800734234
Sommer, Christopher: Mapping Museums in New Zealand - the Representation of Place Identity in the Permanent Exhibition at the Puhoi Bohemian Museum. In: Linhard Tabea, Parson, Timothy (eds.): Mapping Migration, Identity, and Space.Cham: Palgrave Macmillan 2019, 85-116.
Digital Literacy and Extended Reality
Sommer, Christopher; Barbagiovanni Bugiacca, Vanessa, Cheyenne Lauterbach, Christoph Wollesen, Sabrina Alber and Karen Ellwanger: "Wat mutt, dat mutt" - Lehrendenperspektiven auf die ad hoc Digitalisierung im Zuge der Covid-19 Pandemie am Kleinen Fach Materielle Kultur der Universität Oldenburg. In: Bolten-Bühler, Ricarda, Dertinger, Andreas, Ellinger, Dorothea, Thielsch, Angelika, Vanvinkenroye, Jan, Zender, Raphael (eds.): "Brave new (digital) world?!" Proceedings of the Young Forum Media and Higher Education Development. Zenodo 2021, 48-60. 10.5281/zenodo.5736488
Sommer, Christopher, Barbagiovanni Bugiacca, Vanessa, Alber, Sabrina, Wollesen, Christoph, Ellwanger, Karen: Game on! Enhancing Tertiary Student Engagement Through Co-development of Interactive Treasure Hunts. In: Fotaris, Panagiotis (ed.), Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Game Based Learning ECGBL 2020. Supported by University of Brighton, UK, 24-25 September 2020. Reading: Academic Conferences International Limited 2020, 824-827.
Sommer, Christopher, Barbagiovanni Bugiacca, Vanessa, Ellwanger, Karen: X Marks the Spot: A Student-Developed Treasure-Hunt on the Digitisation of Knowledge Production. In: Elbæk, Lars, Majgaard, Gunver, Valente, Andrea, Khalid, Md. Saifuddin (eds.): The Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Game Based Learning ECGBL 2019. Hosted by University of Southern Denmark Odense, Denmark 3-4 October 2019. Reading: Academic Conferences International Limited 2019, 1038-1041.
Reviews
Sommer, Christopher: Stephan Jaeger, The Second World War in the Twenty-First-Century Museum: From Narrative, Memory, and Experience to Experientiality (Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, 2020), pp. 354, ISBN: 978-3110661064. In: Global Military Studies Review, Issue 3, No. 1, 2021, 13-16.
Sommer, Christopher: Svenja Goltermann, The War in Their Minds: German Soldiers and Their Violent Pasts in West Germany, translated by Philip Schmitz (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2017), pp. 428, ISBN: 978-0472118977. In: Global Military Studies Review, Issue 1, No. 2, 2018, 34-37.