Admitted to Academy for Junior Researchers

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Global history specialist Valeska Huber from Freie Universität admitted to Junge Akademie

No 150/2019 from May 26, 2019

On Saturday the historian Dr. Valeska Huber at Freie Universität Berlin was appointed a member of Die Junge Akademie , the German academy for outstanding young scholars. This year ten junior researchers in Germany were selected to join the Academy for five years. Valeska Huber’s research focuses on global history, in particular, the history of migration and mobility as well as communication and the world public. The newly appointed Academy members come from different disciplines and artistic fields. In the coming years they will join interdisciplinary working groups on issues such as cultures of debate, science policy, or art as research. The aim of the academy is to give young members an opportunity to be creative at the interface of academics and society in addition to their main research work. Die Junge Akademie is jointly sponsored by the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Science and Humanities (BBAW) and the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina.

Global history researcher Valeska Huber, born in 1980, addresses the issue of how, in the course of globalization, distant parts of the world "moved together" and what attempts were made to control or contain these processes and movements. This includes the migration of people as well as things such as the spread of diseases or the exchange of ideas. Valeska Huber’s publications cover research findings on epidemics and international health policy, migration and mobility, and education and development. More recently, she has dealt with the history of communication in the age of decolonization and the Cold War. In her current research project on language policy, mass communication, and literacy campaigns since the 1920s, she is investigating how experts from international organizations attempted to communicate with the entire world population and what counter-movements this produced. Valeska Huber heads the Emmy Noether research group "Reaching the People: Communication and Global Orders in the Twentieth Century" at Freie Universität Berlin, where the researchers study these and similar topics. The group is funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG).

Valeska Huber studied at the London School of Economics and Political Science and at Cambridge University. She earned a doctorate in modern and contemporary history from the University of Konstanz. Following research stays at Harvard University, the Institute for Advanced Study in Konstanz, and the German Historical Institute in London, in October 2017 she joined Freie Universität Berlin as the head of an Emmy Noether research group. In 2018 she was awarded the Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Prize of the DFG.

Die Junge Akademie was founded in 2000 as the world’s first academy for outstanding young scholars. Its members are selected from all the academic disciplines as well as artistic fields. They are invited to explore the potential and limits of interdisciplinary work in new projects and are expected to promote initiatives at the intersection of academia and society as well as give new impulses to the academic policy discussion.

Anne Rohloff, Junge Akademie, Tel.: +49 30 203 70-563, Email: presse [at] diejungeakademie (p) de