prof. Dr. Martin Schulze Wessel

Martin Schulze Wessel completed his studies of History and Slavic Studies at the Freie Universität Berlin in 1989, where he also earned his PhD degree in 1994. In 2002, he habilitated in Modern and East European History at the Martin-Luther-Univerität in Halle-Wittenberg.

From 1989 to 1996, he worked as a researcher at the Friedrich Meinecke Institute of the Freie Universität Berlin, then from 1996 to 2002  at the Faculty of History of the Martin-Luther Universität in Halle-Wittenberg. In 1990/91 he served as a researcher at the Institute for Slavic Studies of the Russian Academy of Science in Moscow. In 2000/01 he spent a year as a fellow of the Geisteswissenschaftliches Zentrum Geschichte und Kultur Ostmitteleuropas in Leipzig, in 2013 as guest professor at the Aarhus university.  

IN 2002 he war appointed as Chair for Eastern and South Easter European History at the Ludwig Maximilian University Munich. Since 2003 he serves as director of „Collegium Carolinum - Research Institute for the History of the Czech Republic and Slovakia“, since 2004 as Spokesman of the joint Master program „East European Studies“ at the Ludwig Maximilian University Munich and the University of Regensburg, since 2012 as spokesman of the „Graduate School for East and South East European Studies“, which was established as a result of the German Excellence Initiative. Fort he period from 2008 to 2018 he assumed the function of the head of the International Research Network „Religious Cultures in Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries“ funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and the Grantová agentura České republiky, in which Ludwig Maximilian University Munich, Charles University Prague, Masaryk University Brno and Adam Mickiewicz University Poznań were participating. He serves as chief editor of the journals „Bohemia“ and „Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas“ and as co-editor of the journal „Geschichte und Gesellschaft“.

He was elected president of the German Historical Association for the period from 2012 to 2016, and Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Historisches Kolleg for the period from 2016 to 2020. In 2009 he was elected member of the Bavarian Academy of Science.

His main research fields are the history of international relations between Prussia (resp. Germany), Poland and Russia since the 18th century, the history of religion in East Central Europe and Russian in the 19th and 20th centuries and the contemporary history of the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

Martin Schulze Wessel has published four monographs books, 22 edited volumes, and over 100 papers and book chapters.