Elena Marie Elisabeth Kiesel, PhD

Research Associate, Project “Difference – Transformation – Cohesion. Social Inequality and Discrimination in the GDR and Transformation Period”, Chair of Modern and Contemporary History and Didactics of History, University of Erfurt

My name is Elena M.E. Kiesel and I am historian at the University of Erfurt at the department of modern and contemporary history. Since July 2026, I am a research associate on the project “Difference – Transformation – Cohesion. Social Inequality and Discrimination in the GDR and the Transformation Period”, working on a subproject on experiences and organizations of women with disabilities after the end of the Cold War.

In November 2020, I came to Erfurt as a research fellow at the DFG research group “Voluntariness,” specifically the subproject “Voluntariness in Dictatorships”. I wrote my dissertation on voluntariness as a strategy of self and external conduct in authoritarian systems, using the GDR “Neuererbewegung” as a case study. In addition, I worked from March through December 2024 at the Academic Coordination Office for Thuringia’s “Colonial Legacy.”

While studying cultural studies and European cultural history at the Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg, I had already supported research projects and gained experience in provenance research. After graduating, I was involved in preparing a provenance research project for the Saxony-Anhalt Regional Association within the German Library Association (Deutscher Bibliotheksverband e.V.). From 2018 to 2020, thanks to generous funding from the Stiftung Kulturgutverluste, I conducted research into volumes confiscated as a result of Nazi persecution in libraries in Saxony-Anhalt. To date, I have published primarily on the findings of provenance research, social welfare work under National Socialism, and voluntariness in dictatorships.

I am also actively involved in the civil society association “Blinde Flecken Erfurt,” which works to address right-wing violence, amplify the perspectives of those affected, and engage critically with German culture of remembrance. With my experiences from activism, I am currently working on a conception of participatory research, questioning the paradigm of objectivity in academic knowledge.

Statement of interest:

My current project examines, first, practices and discourses of social difference in the administrative measures of state institutions following the end of the Cold War. This focuses on the circumstances under which marginalized groups organized themselves. Second, using a participatory research approach, I aim to explore how women organized themselves after 1989/1990. By organizing cultural events, I aim to engage in dialogue with people from marginalized groups across the categories of class, gender, ethnicity, and disability—as well as their intersections—and to ask them about their experiences with the changing municipal administration and their life experiences in Germany during the 1990s, a period particularly marked by far-right violence. My work focuses in particular on women with disabilities and their life experiences. Third, I examine how these women became political actors. Consequently, my source material consists of documents from both institutional and private archives, as well as biographical, narrative interviews. I am curious to connect with the political history program group “History from Below”, discussing approaches and perspectives for further collaboration.

Selected Publications:

• Die Utopie der Freiwilligkeit. Leistung und Mitmachen in der Neuererbewegung der DDR, trancript: Bielefeld, publication date April 27th 2027, Open Access. (Dissertation)
• Kolonialität in der Peripherie: über die Arbeit der Wissenschaftlichen Koordinierungsstelle für das koloniale Erbe Thüringen, in Postkolonialismus in Westfalen-Lippe und darüber hinaus, hg. von Claudia Kemper und Christoph Lorke. Münster: Aschendorff Verlag, 2026, S. 63–77. (=Westfälische Forschungen, 75).
• Protestant Welfare Institutions under National Socialism, in: Handbook Ideologies in National Socialism Online, hg. von Julien Reitzenstein. (Vol. 2: Ideology and Institutions) Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2026.
• Voluntariness As a “Necessary Evil”? The Citizens’ Forum on the DDR-Neuererbewegung, Voluntariness: History – Society – Theory, Dezember 2022, https://www.voluntariness.org/voluntariness-as-a-necessary-evil/.
• Together with Markus Dolinsky: “Are we Fated? The Complexity of Voluntary Decision-Making in the Vikings TV Series”, Voluntariness: History – Society – Theory, June 2021, https://www.voluntariness.org/vikings/.