Dr Kerstin Schwedes

Kerstin Schwedes has been the head of Global Textbook Resource Center (GLOTREC) at the Georg Eckert Institute since January 2023. This central strategic undertaking interconnects the digital services of the institute and consolidate the GEI’s capabilities in the fields of digitisation, internationalisation and applied inter- and transdisciplinary research.

Kerstin Schwedes has coordinated the project ‘EurViews. Europe in Textbooks’ since 2009. She also became the academic coordinator and data curator of the project ‘WorldViews. The World in Textbooks’ that started in 2015. World Views is a multilingual, digital resource for primary and commentated source material, containing digitised excerpts from textbooks from around the world on topics that are of global, transnational and interregional relevance.

From 2016 to 2022 Kerstin Schwedes held the position of ombudswoman at the institute and she is responsible for coordinating work experience placements. 2017 she was appointed as member of the 'Strategieforum Europaforschung' by the Presidency of the 'Leibniz Gemeinschaft'.

Kerstin Schwedes studied art history, history, and German literature. After studying abroad in Italy, she completed her MA in 1993 and was awarded her PhD from the Technical University of Braunschweig in 1996. From 1997 to 2002, she was a fellow of the Dorothea Erxleben Programme in Rome and Göttingen, and continued to work in Göttingen in 2003 and 2004 as an assistant in the history of art department. From 2004 to 2009, Dr Schwedes was a postdoctoral researcher at the German Research Foundation in the Emmy Noether Research Group, where she worked on ‘The Reception of Romanticism, the Aesthetics of Autonomy, and Art History’ at the history of art department in Göttingen.

Research and teaching foci

Her research and teaching foci include aspects of inter- and transmedia, art history methods and forms of knowledge transfer in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as well as research on concepts of Europe and Europeanness from a transnational point of view, methods of digital humanities and knowledge organisation.

Projects

• GLOTREC
• Teaching the Teachers: A multi-perspective Approach to the First World War in the classroom
• EurViews. Europe in Textbooks
• WorldViews

Selected Publications

• Steffen Hennicke, Bianca Pramann and Kerstin Schwedes: Forschungsdaten in der internationalen Schulbuchforschung – Ein Werkstattbericht. In: Digital Humanities in der internationalen Schulbuchforschung. Nieländer, Maret; De Luca, Ernesto (ed.). Braunschweig: V & R unipress 2018, pp. 217-230.
• Between Persistent Differences and Vagueness: Textbook Narratives about the First World War, Christophe, Barbara and Kerstin Schwedes. In: The Long End of the First World War. Bromber, Katrin; Lange, Katharina; Liebau, Heike; Wetzel, Anorthe (ed.). Frankfurt a.M.: Campus, 2018, pp. 209-234.
• Schulbuch und Erster Weltkrieg. Christophe, Barbara; Schwedes, Kerstin (ed.). Göttingen: V & R, 2015.
• Bildung und Schule im Kaiserreich unter Wilhelm II. In: 1914 ... schrecklich kriegerische Zeiten. Ausst.Kat. Braunschweigisches Landesmuseum. Otte, Wulf; Pöppelmann, Heike; Zimmermann, Ole (ed.).  Braunschweig: Appelhans 2014, pp. 80-89.
• A conjointly narrated European History. In: Shared Histories for a Europe without dividing lines. Council of Europe (ed.). Strasbourg 2014, pp. 582-589. Available online: http://shared-histories.coe.int .
• Der Künstler und sein Tod: Testamente europäischer Künstler vom Spätmittelalter bis zum 20. Jahrhundert, Hegener, Nicole; Schwedes, Kerstin (ed.). Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann 2012.
• Raffael und Michelangelo: Renaissance - Barock? In: Klassizistisch-romantische Kunst(t)räume. Imaginationen im Europa des 19. Jahrhunderts und ihr Beitrag zur kulturellen Identitätsfindung. Vol. 2: Raffael als Paradigma. Heß, Gilbert; Agazzi, Elena; Décultot, Elisabeth (ed.). Berlin, New York: De Gruyter 2012, pp. 239-254.
• Polychromie als Herausforderung. Ästhetische Debatten zur Farbigkeit von Skulptur. In: Klassizistisch-romantische Kunst(t)räume. Imaginationen im Europa des 19. Jahrhunderts und ihr Beitrag zur kulturellen Identitätsfindung. Vol. 1: European Philhellenism / Der europäische Philhellenismus, Heß, Gilbert; Agazzi, Elena; Décultot, Elisabeth (ed.). Berlin, New York: De Gruyter 2009, pp. 61-84.
• Théodon retrouvé. In: Kunstchronik, 2009: 5, pp. 197-200
• Wortlose Beredsamkeit. Evokatorische Bildsprache von Michelangelos Römischer Pietà und dem Minerva-Christus. In: Künste und Natur in Diskursen der Frühen Neuzeit. Laufhütte, Hartmut (ed.). Wiesbaden: Harassowitz 2000:1, pp. 355-372
• Historia in statua. Zur Eloquenz plastischer Bildwerke Michelangelos im Umfeld des Christus von Santa Maria sopra Minerva zu Rom, Frankfurt a. M. et al.: Lang 1998.