News

American Made with a Mexican Flow

In her first book, based on her PhD thesis at the Institute of History, Dianne Violeta Mausfeld writes a socio-cultural history of Chicano rap music in Los Angeles. Drawing on long-term fieldwork, oral history, and close readings of lyrics, performances, and social media, Mausfeld reframes «barrio rap» not as a derivative subgenre but as a site of cultural production where identity is negotiated through sound, style, and place. Through its interdisciplinary scope, the book speaks to scholars of cultural studies, migration studies, hip-hop studies, Latinx and Chicanx studies, and urban history. 

by Dianne Violeta Mausfeld
San Diego State University Press | 2026

→ Open Access Publication 

On 26 May, Njabulo Chipangura, Michaela Oberhofer, Amy Shakespeare and Ken Aïcha Sy discussed the opportunities and challenges facing museums in dealing with collections acquired through colonial violence.

The event was moderated by Henri-Michel Yéré.

Among the audience were students from the introductory seminar ‘Colonialism in Objects: The History of Objects in the Age of Restitution’ run by the Department of History at the University of Bern, who had attended a workshop with Ken Aïcha Sy earlier that day. Throughout the spring semester, they explored the history of colonial violence, trade, racism and global interconnections. In doing so, they worked closely with the curators of the Bern History Museum.

From urban sanitation reforms to global debates on water rights: water has shaped the history of public health since the 19th century. The international workshop ‘Water and Public Health: Historical Perspectives from the Nineteenth to the Twenty-First Century’ brings together historians to discuss the complex interconnections between water, public health, labour and environmental policy from the 19th century to the present day.

Friday 5th of June, 2026, 12:00–6:00 pm
Saturday, 6th of June, 2026, 9:00–3:00 pm
University of Bern, Mittelstrasse 43, Room: 216

Organisers:
Christiane Hoth de Olano, Institute of History
Dr. Pascal Germann, Institute for the History of Medicine

Colloquium for Economic, Social, Environmental and Climate History

This talk traces the hazard map’s rise amid mid-20th-century Swiss conflicts. Postwar Alpine tourism drove building in avalanche-prone areas. While the federal government sought to limit costly protections, municipalities controlled permits and risks were uncertain. Scientists developed hazard maps to justify zoning, a political compromise that became a global risk governance tool.

Dr Lucas Müller, University of Geneva, Switzerland

19.05.2026 | 18:15-19:30
Room F 012 | Unitobler | Lerchenweg 36

Colloquium for Economic, Social, Environmental and Climate History

With 19th-century geological discoveries, climate variability over deep time became clear, especially the unusually warm Eocene. Yet explanations—astronomical, solar, terrestrial, or atmospheric—remained inadequate. By the early 20th century, resignation over the “paleothermal problem” led not to resolution but to pragmatic approaches, spawning fields like paleoceanography and climate modeling.

Dr Christoph Rosol, Technical University Dresden and MPI Geoanthropology, Jena / currently Forum Basiliense, Basel

12.05.2026 | 18:15-19:30
Room F 012 | Unitobler | Lerchenweg 36

On 16 June 2026, the Colombian historian Amada Carolina Pérez Benavides will give a guest lecture at the Institute of History. Drawing on the principles of critical museology, she will discuss her work with indigenous communities in Colombia. The event will be held in Spanish.

16 June 2026 | 16:15–17:45 | Unitobler F006

In their contribution to the volume «Agricultural Modernisation and the Green Revolution in the Twentieth-Century World», Juri Auderset and Peter Moser explain the entanglements between the use of biotic and mineral resources and the change of knowledge regimes in 20^th century agriculture. 

→ Publication

The University of Bern’s Eastern European Studies programme is offering a semester fellowship for the autumn semester 2026 in the field of «War and Conflict Dynamics in Eastern Europe».

Application until 31 March 2026:
Dr. Cécile Druey, cecile.druey@unibe.ch

Climatic extreme events often seem distant and abstract – yet time and time again they have profoundly shaped societies. The eruption of Mount Tambora in 1815 triggered global climate anomalies that led to the «Year Without a Summer» in 1816, intensifying hunger and social crises across large parts of Europe. Such events reveal how closely natural processes and social orders are intertwined. This episode of the podcast by the Institute of History at the University of Bern asks what we can learn from this entanglement: How can climate data and historical sources be brought into dialogue? And what new perspectives emerge when climate science and history jointly trace the legacies of volcanic eruptions in past and present?

Niklaus Bartlome and Richard Warren are doctoral researchers in the interdisciplinary VICES project at the University of Bern, bringing together history and climate science. Their shared focus is on tracing how volcanic eruptions affect climate systems and societies, from local harvests to global connections. One product of this collaboration is ClimeApp, a digital web application that makes climate data accessible for historical research.

→ Research Project VICES
→ ClimeApp

Zitierweise
Podcast 18. Niklaus Bartlome und Richard Warren mit Noah Businger: Eruptions Across Disciplines: Where Climate Meets History, Bern : Geschichte im Gespräch 2026.

Agnes Gehbald, Daniel Bellingradt. Paper Regimes of the Publishing World: A Bird’s Eye View on the Materiality of Global Book History, Global History: Globalgeschichte 3: 2 (2025), 1-28.

As paper was universally adopted by publishing cultures worldwide, paper as a physical artifact offers a comparative and long-term perspective on the materiality of making books across many different regional book cultures and traditions.

“Unissued diplomas” is a worldwide exhibition that honors the memory of Ukrainian students who will never graduate because their lives were taken by the Russian full-scale invasion that started on February 24, 2022. The exhibition is initiated by the Ukrainian Society at the University of Bern.

Opening of the Exhibition: 17 February 2026, 18:00 h, Foyer of Main Building

• Virginia Richter, Rector of the University of Bern
• Tetyana Fedorchuk, Ukrainian Society at UniBE
• Julia Richers, Eastern European Studies

Exhibition

• 17-20 February 2026: Foyer of Main Building (Hochsschulstrasse 4)
• 23-27 February 2026: University of Bern, Unitobler (Lerchenweg 36)

Talk & Discussion

• 26 February, 18:15h: “Everyday Resilience and Its Limits” with Prof. Dr. Mikhailo Minakov at the Schweizerische Osteuropabibliothek