Albert Feierabend

Since April 2025
Research Associate, University of Erfurt, Scientific Coordination "Koloniales Erbe in Thüringen"

Since 2023
PhD scholarship holder of the Gerda Henkel Foundation in the project "Geographie und Politik zwischen Nordostafrika und Europa" at the Centre for Transcultural Studies / Perthes Collection in Gotha (University of Erfurt)

2023 
Herzog-Ernst Fellow at the Centre for Transcultural Studies / Perthes Collection in Gotha (University of Erfurt)

2022 
Project Coordinator in the scholarship programme Creativity in Studies (University of Göttingen)

2021 
Master of Arts in History and Intercultural German Studies (University of Göttingen)

2018 
Bachelor of Arts in History and German Studies (University of Kiel)

2017 
DAAD scholarship holder at the Goethe-Institut Novosibirsk, Russian Federation

Geography and Politics between North Africa and Europe. Ego-Documents as an Approach to a Relational History of Knowledge

The research project focuses on journeys from Europe to Northeast Africa before colonial land appropriation. It examines natural-scientific-geographical and political spatial knowledge based on selected texts produced during travels and explores different actors, forms, and contents of collaborative knowledge production, thereby investigating the genealogies of social and political spaces on-site.

The project relies on notes, diaries, reports, letters, and cartographic works preserved in the Perthes Collection (Research Library Gotha), which originated from the region and made their way to Gotha. It combines globally informed, knowledge-historical approaches with self-testimonial research. Unlike later published travel reports, these unpublished sources alter the perspective on local political conditions in Northeast Africa in the 1860s to 1880s, as well as on the Europeans and Africans traveling there. The goal of the project is to develop a more nuanced understanding of European-African spatial knowledge and to profile a new approach to a relational history between Africa and Europe.

The project is funded by the Gerda Henkel Foundation.

Essays:

Karten im Sand. Geografischer Wissenstransfer auf Forschungsreisen im 19. Jahrhundert, in: Themenportal Europäische Geschichte, 2024. open access

Von "Kollaborateuren" zu "intermediaries". Zur Forschung über die außereuropäische Kooperation in kolonialen Kontexten, in: Geschichte und Gesellschaft 48, H. 4 (2022), pp. 649-674. open access

Editorship:

(since 01/2024, together with Florian Balbiani): Mapping Africa and Asia. Cartographies of Africa and Asia (1800-1945). open access

Reviews, smaller contributions:

Review of: Dane Kennedy: Mungo Park's Ghost. The Haunted Hubris of British Explorers in Nineteenth-Century Africa, in: H-Soz-Kult 2025. open access

Die „Expedition im Bierhause". Ein anderer Blick auf die Afrikaforscher des 19. Jahrhunderts, in: Blog der Forschungsbibliothek Gotha, 2024. open access

Emphasising the Unknown. The Emergence of Blank Spaces on 19th-century Maps of Africa, in: Mapping Africa and Asia, 2024. open access

Conference report: ""Hofmohren". Repräsentation und soziale Realität von Afrikanern in deutschen Residenzen 1600–1800, in: H-Soz-Kult, 25.01.2023. open access (with Teresa Göltl).

Intermediaries, in: Rebekka Habermas (ed.): Universität und Kolonialismus, undated. open access

Europäische Kolonialgeschichte, in: Rebekka Habermas (ed.): Universität und Kolonialismus, undated. open access

Deutschlands Einigkeit in Afrika. Die Nationalbewegung und die Entstehung der „Deutschen Expedition" (1860–1864), Transatlantic Doctoral Seminar, DHI Washington, 04.06.2025.

Frauen, intermediaries und Subalterne auf Expeditionen, lecture series of the History Department of the University of Erfurt, together with Sara Müller and Samuel Kidane Haile, 06.02.2025.

„Die Expedition im Bierhause". Ein anderer Blick auf die „Entdecker" des 19. Jahrhunderts, lecture series "Perthes im Gespräch", Perthes Collection Gotha, 11.12.2024

„Als wir im Lande der Engländer waren". Afrikanische Reisende und europäische Expeditionen 1860–1874, Institute for Diaspora and Genocide Research at Ruhr University Bochum, 24.06.2024.

"They were willing to make use of me." European Expeditions in the Political Calculations of the Bornu Empire 1850-1874
(Tuesday Talks at the Centre for Transcultural Studies, University of Erfurt, and Research Colloquium of the Seminar for Medieval and Modern History, University of Göttingen, 23 May 2023).