Anna Horstmann, PhD

Academic Councillor
Bielefeld University, Germany

Visiting Fellowship 2025/26 (July 1, 2026 – August 1, 2026)

I am a research associate at the Faculty of History, Philosophy, and Theology, Department of History, at Bielefeld University. My research focuses on contemporary history, with an emphasis on labour and war from a gender history perspective. I studied journalism, history, and gender studies. As a fellow of the Gerda Henkel Foundation, I completed my doctorate at the Ruhr University Bochum at the Chair of Social History and Social Movements on the topic “Women in the Laboratory: Female Chemists and Laboratory Technicians in German Chemical Companies from 1900 to 1990.” The dissertation was awarded the Max Weber Prize for Early Career Research by the University of Erfurt and is scheduled for publication by Böhlau Verlag at the end of 2025. From June 2022 to February 2024, I worked at the Research Center for Contemporary History in Hamburg on the project “Trade Union Time Policies from the 1970s to the 2000s.” Currently, I am working on my habilitation, for which I employ Digital History methods to analyze approximately 7,000 essays written by students in 1955 about the Second World War. The central focus is on the relationship between memory and knowledge in these essays.

Statement of interest

Alongside engaging with the institute’s staff on topics such as digital humanities, corpus linguistics, and memory politics, I hope that my visit will initiate a long-term collaboration with the Institute and scholars at Bielefeld University. Building on my habilitation interests, another interdisciplinary research project has emerged with colleagues at Bielefeld University, focusing on experiences of occupation during and after the Second World War in Europe. We would be delighted if the Institute of Contemporary History in Ljubljana could envision becoming one of our partners. The project aims to broaden the spatial and temporal scope of existing research on occupation in Europe. In many regions, such as Slovenia, occupation regimes changed multiple times, dividing countries and tearing families apart. Our project focuses less on the primary historical investigation of this period; instead, we are interested in exploring the traces that the diverse experiences of occupation in Eastern and Western Europe have left in the lived and transmitted landscapes of memory today.

Selected publications

Horstmann, Anna/Llanos-Reyes Claudio: From the policy of humanization to labour flexibilization: the case of the Federal Republic of Germany from the 1970s to the 1980s, in: Labor History (2025), S. 1-17.
Andresen, Knud/Birke, Peter/Gruber, Svea/Horstmann, Anna/Mayer-Ahuja, Nicole (Hg.): Arbeiten um zu leben! Zur Geschichte und Aktualität des Kampfes um Arbeitszeiten, Campus 2025.
Horstmann, Anna: „Unter Berücksichtigung ihrer Aufgaben als Frau und Mutter“. Weibliche Erwerbsarbeit und Frauenförderung im Mitteldeutschen Chemiedreieck während der DDR-Zeit, in: Sachsen und Anhalt. Jahrbuch der Historischen Kommission für Sachsen-Anhalt, Halle/Saale 2024, S. 313-350.
Horstmann, Anna: „Die Zeit gehört uns!… und nachts gehört meine Mammi nach Hause“. Vergeschlechtlichte Zeitregime am Beispiel der Nachtarbeit, in: Journal Netzwerk Frauen- und Geschlechterforschung NRW 53 (2023), S. 47-52.
Horstmann, Anna: Feminisierung als Statusproblem. Der Verein Deutscher Chemiker und seine Berufskonstruktion der Chemikerin, in: Österreichische Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaften 3/2022, S. 101–123.