• Social history as political history. Werner Conze and the reorientation of West German historiography after 1945 (Ordnungssysteme 9), Munich 2001 more...
• 1968 - A rift in history? Social upheaval and the 1968 movements in West Germany and Sweden, Konstanz 2005 more...
• An eternal downfall. The apocalyptic population discourse in the 20th century, Bielefeld 2007 more. ..
• The Romanticism of Rationality. Alva & Gunnar Myrdal - Social Engineering in Sweden, Bielefeld 2010 more...
  (English translation: Alva and Gunnar Myrdal: Social Engineering in the Modern World, Lanham/MD et al. 2014 [Paperback 2016] more...)
• Biographies. Read - tell - research, Frankfurt/Main, New York 2012 more...
• In Search of the Nordic Man. German racial anthropology in the modern world, Bielefeld 2015 more...
• Henning von Rittersdorf: The German Destiny. Memories of a racial anthropologist. A docu-fiction, Bielefeld 2021 more...
• Landscape and nation. Rhine - Dalarna - England, Bielefeld 2022 more. ..
• "Heroic modernity". Ambivalence of an epoch, Bielefeld 2025 more...
• Hand grenade or drawing pencil. On the ambivalence of modernism, Hamburg 2025 more...

• (Together with Jan Eckel): Neue Zugänge zur Geschichte der Geschichtswissenschaft, Göttingen 2007 more...
• The Order of Modernity. Social Engineering in the 20th Century, Bielefeld 2009 more...
• From "Volk" to "Population". Interventionist population policy in the post-war period, Münster 2015 more...
• (Together with Thomas Alkemeyer, Nikolaus Buschmann): Diagnoses of the Present. Cultural Forms of Social Self-Problematisation in Modernity, Bielefeld 2019 more...
• The performance. Performance in science, Bielefeld 2019 more...

• Imaginary Battles? ‘1968’ in Sweden and West Germany, in: Zeithistorische Forschungen 2, 2005, pp. 202–223 (also available online)
• “I see what you do not see”. On the theoretical foundations of historical research, in: Eckel, Jan/Etzemüller, Thomas (eds.): New Approaches to the History of Historiography, Göttingen 2007, pp. 27–68
• Hjorthagen 1937. Reading a Photograph as a Metaphor for Modernity, in: Budde, Gunilla/Freist, Dagmar/von Reeken, Dietmar (eds.): Historical Sources. Building Bridges between Historical Research and History Education. Festschrift for Hilke Günther-Arndt, Berlin 2008, pp. 45–55
• Social engineering as a science of behaviour for the level-headed. An introductory sketch, in: Etzemüller, Thomas (ed.): The Order of Modernity. Social Engineering in the 20th Century, Bielefeld 2009, pp. 11–39
• ‘Swedish Modern’. Alva and Gunnar Myrdal design a society of normalisation, in: Mittelweg 36 18, 2009, Issue 6, pp. 49–63
• “Leisure is meant to create harmonious people”: “Ambivalent Modernity” and the social engineering of everyday life. The “Fritiden” exhibition in Ystad in 1936, in: Historische Anthropologie 19, 2011, pp. 372–390
• The Romantic Rhine – The Iron Rhine. A river as an imaginary landscape of modernity, in: Historische Zeitschrift 295, 2012, pp. 390–424
• The ‘Vf.’ as a biographical paradox. How does one become a ‘scientist’ and (how) can this be observed?, in: Alkemeyer, Thomas/Budde, Gunilla/Freist, Dagmar (eds.): Self-Formations. Social and Cultural Practices of Subjectification, Bielefeld 2013, pp. 175–196
• Visual Disturbances? Helen Keller and Eugenics, in: Bergermann, Ulrike (ed.): Disability Trouble. Aesthetics and Visual Politics in Helen Keller, Berlin 2013, pp. 175–193
• The Biographical Paradox – or: When Does a Biography Cease to Be a Biography?, in: Non Fiktion 8, 2013, pp. 89–103
• Did Modernity Have a ‘Janus Face’? A critical examination from a (Northern) European perspective, in: Hachtmann, Rüdiger/Reichardt, Sven (eds.): Detlev Peukert and Research on the Nazi Era, Göttingen 2015, pp. 112–125
• Moving towards the ‘truth’. Self-representation in academia, in: Merkur 69, 2015, no. 797, pp. 31–43 (also in: Eurozine, Oct. 2015, and reprinted in: German Association of University Professors and Lecturers [ed.]: Highlights of Science. An Almanac, Heidelberg 2016, pp. 41–49)
• Things as Images of Themselves. The Example of Brasília – Materialised Space and Visualised Practical Guidance, in: Visual History 2016
• Ambivalent Metaphor. A Critical Review of Zygmunt Bauman’s ‘Dialectics of Order’ (1989), in: Zeithistorische Forschungen 14, 2017, pp. 177–183 (also online)
• Social engineering, Version: 2.0, in: Docupedia – Contemporary History
• Brasilia as an Experimental Space and a Total Work of Art, in: Böschen, Stefan/Groß, Matthias/Krohn, Wolfgang (eds.): Experimental Society. The Experiment as a Dispositif of the Knowledge Society, Baden-Baden 2017, pp. 269–289
• ‘Poor Fools’, Pseudo-scientists and Friedrich Kittler. The Anti-Academic as Function and Inner Attitude, in: Mittelweg 36 26, 2017, Nos. 4–5, pp. 70–87
• What Might Be True. A Plea for Fictional Empiricism, in: Merkur 72, 2018, No. 835, pp. 17–28
• ‘Diagnosing the present’ means: making something visible as something. Perception, visualisation and intervention in forms of modernity, in: Alkemeyer, Thomas/Buschmann, Nikolaus/Etzemüller, Thomas (eds.): Diagnoses of the Present. Cultural Forms of Societal Self-Reflection in Modernity, Bielefeld 2019, pp. 105–126
• ‘It’s the performance, stupid’. Performance → Evidence: The Public Appearance in Academia, in: Etzemüller, Thomas (ed.): The Public Appearance. Performance in Academia, Bielefeld 2019, pp. 9–43
• (With Roman Eichler) ‘Still photography is a method of conference analysis’, in: Etzemüller, Thomas (ed.): The Performance. Performance in Academia, Bielefeld 2019, pp. 203–233
• A Tool for Coping with the World. The Group between Heavy and Cybernetic Modernity, in: Mittelweg 36 28/29, 2019/20, Issue 6/1, pp. 22–43
• Almost, public, Tweet Science: The Public Presence and Image of Scientists in the Shadow of the Virus, in: INDES 10, 2020, No. 3, pp. 19–31
• ‘My God, that was the happiest year of my life’. The Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin as a milieu and a revelation. On the ethnography of an anti-university institution, in: Meyer, Daniel/Reuter, Julia/Berli, Oliver (eds.): Ethnography of Higher Education. On the Study of University Practice, Bielefeld 2022, pp. 251–273
• Reality is almost like a novel … But why, then, don’t academics write fiction themselves? The example of a docu-fiction, in:WerkstattGeschichte 31, 2022, No. 86, pp. 103–114
• Biography as a (paradoxical) construction, in: Klein, Christian (ed.): Handbook of Biography. Methods, Traditions, Theories, Stuttgart, 2nd ed., 2022, pp. 81–89
• Revolution or Shift? The New as Staged Non-New. A case study from a sociological perspective on science, in: Jäger, Friedrich/Voßkamp, Sabine (eds.): How Does the New Come into the World? Creativity and Innovation from an Interdisciplinary Perspective, Berlin, Heidelberg 2023, pp. 213–228
• The German Federal Railways Timetable. The Rhythm of Life in Cumbersome Modernity, in: Merkur 77, 2023, No. 888, pp. 30–43
• Democracy in the Interwar Period – The Myth of a European Failure. A Provocative Intervention, in: Merkur 78, 2024, No. 897, pp. 5–16
• Unloved, Cold, Heroic Modernity. Decisionists and Social Engineers, in: Merkur 79, 2025, No. 911, pp. 5–15
• The Archival Document as an Epistolary Novel!, in: Krüger, Christine G./Meifort, Franziska/Witkowski, Mareike (eds.): Correspondence from the Past. Letters as Historical Sources, Göttingen 2025, pp. 245–254
• Inclusions/Exclusions. Melvin D. Williams’ ‘Ethnography of an Anthropological Institute’ as a dense description of social processes in academia – or: Can the microphysics of academia be better reflected in fictional texts?, in: Rieger-Ladich, Markus et al. (eds.): Rhetoric of Inclusion, Practice of Exclusion. Self-reflections in Educational Science, Weinheim 2026, pp. 377–389

• 56 reviews in FAZ, HPB, HSK, HZ, IASL-Online, NPL, Sehepunkte, VSWG, ZfG and others
  

• Cultural history of modernity (late 18th to 21st century)
• scientific research
• Biographical research
• Theory and history of historical science

Ongoing projects:

• The Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin. A historical-scientific-sociological study, 1978-2020 (since 2024) more...
• Political Cultural History of Scandinavia (since 2024) more...
• Performance and Subjectivisation in Science: Cognition as a Social Process (since 2013) more...
• Participation: Focus group "Diagnoses (in) the present", Hanse-Wissenschaftskolleg (since 2021) more...
• Participation: "Ambivalent educational advancement - cultural and social science approaches in dialogue", funded by the "Exploration Fund" of the University of Tübingen for the preparation of a joint project (since 2024)

Completed projects:

• The implementation of a new truth. The establishment of social history in West German historiography (1995-2000) more...
• "1968" in West Germany and Sweden (2000-2002) more...
• "I see what you don't see". On the theoretical foundations of historiographical work (2002-2007) more...
• The eternal downfall. The matrix of the population discourse (2002-2007) more...
• A normalisation society and its architects. The Swedes Alva and Gunnar Myrdals (2004-2009) more...
• Organisational thinking and social engineering as a reaction to modernity. Northwest Europe, 1920s to 1950s (2006-2010) more...
• Introduction to Biographical Research (2009-2012) more...
• "Population": The "population question" and the social order of society, ca. 1798-1987 (2009-2014) more...
• The subject of football (2011-2015) more...
• Co-applicant: Research Training Group "Self-Formations. Practices of Subjectivation in Historical and Interdisciplinary Perspective" (2010-2019) more...
• Co-applicant: Transformation through Community - Processes of Collective Subjectivation in the Context of Sustainable Development (TransGem) (2019-2023) more...
• Imaginary landscapes: Landscapes as projection surfaces for social concepts of order and the future, ca. 1750-2010 (2010-2024) more ...
• Participation: Doctoral programme "Shaping the Future" (2019-2024) more...
• Co-applicant: DFG network "Diagnosing (in) Modernity" (2022-2025) more...
• Imagination and Intervention: On the History of Modernity (2004-2025) more...

The anthropology of science is located somewhere between the sociology of science and science studies. It is a perspective that looks at scientists as actors, but not as autonomous "great thinkers", but as subjects in the sense of subjectivisation theory. Since my dissertation, the title of which is a study in the sociology of science, I have used small case studies to illuminate the eminently important role that the social plays within science. It is still held in low esteem by the protagonists of the field, for example conformism, the compulsion to perform, the unconditional belief in the cause. Such dispositions make scientists function without them really being able (or willing) to see through them.

• Social history as political history. Werner Conze and the reorientation of West German historiography after 1945 (Ordnungssysteme 9), Munich 2001 more...
• The "Vf." as a biographical paradox. How does one become a "scientist" and (how) can this be observed?, in: Alkemeyer, Thomas/Budde, Gunilla/Freist, Dagmar (eds.): Selbst-Bildungen. Social and cultural practices of subjectivation, Bielefeld 2013, pp. 175-196
• Moving into the "true". Self-representation in the academic world, in: Merkur 69, 2015, H. 797, pp. 31-43 (also in: Eurozine, Oct. 2015, as well as reprinted in: Deutscher Hochschulverband [ed:] Glanzlichter der Wissenschaft. An Almanac, Heidelberg 2016, pp. 41-49)
• "Poor lunatics", pseudoscientists and Friedrich Kittler. The anti-academic as a function and inner attitude, in: Mittelweg 36 26, 2017, H. 4-5, pp. 70-87
• (ed.) The performance. Performance in academia, Bielefeld 2019 more...
• "It's the performance, stupid". Performanz → Evidenz: Der Auftritt in der Wissenschaft, in: Etzemüller, Thomas (ed.): Der Auftritt. Performance in science, Bielefeld 2019, pp. 9-43
• (Together with Roman Eichler) "Still photography is a method of conference analysis", in: Etzemüller, Thomas (ed.): Der Auftritt. Performance in science, Bielefeld 2019, pp. 203-233
• Fast, public, tweet science: Appearance and image of scientists in the wake of the virus, in: INDES 10, 2020, H. 3, pp. 19-31
• "My God, that was the happiest year of my life". The Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin as milieu and revelation. On the ethnography of an anti-university institution, in: Meyer, Daniel/Reuter, Julia/Berli, Oliver (eds.): Ethnografie der Hochschule. On research into university practice, Bielefeld 2022, pp. 251-273
• Revolution or shift? The new as staged non-new. A case study from the perspective of the sociology of science, in: Jäger, Friedrich/Voßkamp, Sabine (eds.): Wie kommt das Neue in die Welt? Interdisciplinary Creativity and Innovation, Berlin, Heidelberg 2023, pp. 213-228
• Inclusions/exclusions. Melvin D. Williams' "Enthnography of an Anthropological Institute" as a dense description of social processes in science - or: Can the microphysics of science be better reflected in fictional texts?, in: Rieger-Ladich, Markus et al. (eds.): Rhetorik der Inklusion, Praxis der Exklusion. Self-observations of educational science, Weinheim 2026, pp. 377-386