Current Historiographical Research at the History and Civilisation Department, European University Institute, Florence, Italy

The Open Access e-journal Zeitenblicke 12 (2013), Nr. 1, is an interesting issue -based on interviews organised by EUI Ph.D. researchers and also single essays- dealing with the research community and activities in the History and Civilisation Department at the European University Institute  (EUI). These essays and interviews are showcasing and informing about the many intellectual challenges that are part of the daily activities of the EUI History department.

Zeitenblicke is part of the excellent Historicum.Net, a portal for the Historical Sciences on the Internet in Germany. Sehepunkte, a component of the portal, is the best place to look for book reviews in the field of history in Germany -all historical periods are included and interdisciplinary works are also reviewed-, and Lesepunkte, a third component of the portal, is a platform for history teachers. Historicum.net  is one of the best online history projects in Germany which is supported by the State Library of Bayern, the University of Cologne and many other German partners. Chronicon  is a sophisticated search engine which allows better knowledge of the portal’s complete contents. The only criticism that could be raised -but this is an important one- is that nothing, not even the basic descriptions of the different contents of the portal, has been translated into English for the purpose of informing better a worldwide community of interested historians. Internet is, above all, access to global knowledge and the language of such a worldwide communication is English today, a language that was indeed used for some of the papers published  in the Zeitenblicke's overview of the EUI History Department's research activities.

The issue is the result of an important initiative by some EUI history Ph.D. researchers. These promote the intellectual output and activities of the EUI History and Civilization Department dialogging with some EUI history department members, professors and former professors. In doing so, they reproduced in an online open access journal, the constant intellectual dialogue that is happening between all components of the Department, Ph.D. researchers, post-doctoral fellows, visiting scholars and professors, during the whole academic year.

The title of this Zeitenblicke monograph issue is "Current Historiographical Research at the European University Institute". Interviewers and authors of this issue are EUI Ph.D. researchers: Tilman Kulke, Moritz von Brescius, Robrecht Declercq and James White. They are the authors of a global introduction to this issue: Diversity in Unity: An Introduction to Historiography at the European University Institute.

Former EUI professors like Sebastian Conrad, Antonella Romano and Martin van Gelderen are interviewed together with the Head of the History Department, Federico Romero, Professor of History of Post-War European Cooperation and Integration and Jorge Flores, Professor of History of European Colonial and Post-Colonial Systems and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department. All the abstracts and the different interviews are publically accessible in Zeitenblicke:

• Interview über die Globalgeschichte mit Professor Sebastian Conrad. Fragen von Moritz von Brescius und Tilmann Kulke
  
• Doing Things with Intellectual History: An Interview with Martin van Gelderen By Brian Kjær Olesen, Jonas Gerlings, Kaarlo Havu, Daniel Knegt, Matti La Mela, and Thomas Ø. Wittendorff
  
• The Cultural History of Empire. An Interview with Professor Antonella Romano and Professor Jorge Flores by Moritz von Brescius
  
• International History at the EUI. An Interview with Professor Frederico Romero by Frank Gerits
  

The essays published in Zeitenblicke 12 (2013), Nr. 1 and completing this series of interviews are the following:

• Frank Gerits: An International Approach to the Cultural Cold War. French Public Diplomacy Towards Africa (1945-1965)
• Kaarlo Johannes Havu: Erasmus on Sovereignty, Politics and Rhetoric in Institutio principis Christiani
• Carolina Obradors Suazo: From Citizenship to Citizenry. Towards a cultural approach to the figure of the citizen in the 15th century Barcelona
• Brian Kjær Olesen: Entagled Positions. From Comparative and Transnational History to Histories of Possible Meanings
• Jan-Hendrik Schulz: Kontinuität und Scheitern sozialrevolutionärer Terrorismen in den 1980er Jahren- die französische Action Directe (AD) und die westdeutsche Rote Armee Fraktion (RAF) im Vergleich

These papers, as all scholarly output of the History Department, are indexed in the EUI institutional repository, Cadmus:

• Diversity in unity : an introduction to historiography at the European University Institute, by Tilman KULKE, Moritz VON BRESCIUS, Robrecht DECLERCQ and James WHITE
• An international approach to the Cultural Cold War : French public diplomacy towards Africa (1945-1965), by Frank GERITS
• 
  Erasmus on sovereignty, politics and rhetoric in Institutio principis Christiani by Kaarlo Johannes HAVU
• From citizenship to citizenry : towards a cultural approach to the figure of the citizen in the 15th century Barcelona, by Carolina OBRADORS
• Entagled positions : from comparative and transnational history to histories of possible meanings, by Brian Kjær OLESEN
• Kontinuität und Scheitern sozialrevolutionärer Terrorismen in den 1980er Jahren- die französische Action Directe (AD) und die westdeutsche Rote Armee Fraktion (RAF) im Vergleich, by Jan-Hendrik SCHULZ.