Universität Konstanz
Department of History, Sociology, Empirical Educational Research and Sport Science
Universitätsstraße 10, Box 11
78464 Konstanz, Germany
E-Mail: christa.wirth@uia.no
About
Christa Wirth is Professor in history (1750-present) at the University Agder (UiA) in Norway. She leads the interdisciplinary research group, Claimed Pasts: Critical Knowledge and Heritage Production.
From 2006 to 2008 she was Academic Assistant to Prof. Dr. Carlo Moos at the Department of History of the University of Zurich in the areas of teaching, research, library and administration. Thereafter, from 2008 to 2013, she was first a Visiting Fellow and later a Teaching Fellow/Advisor at the History Department of Harvard in the areas of Studies of Women, Gender and Sexuality. She concluded her tenure there with a position as Postdoctoral Teaching Associate in the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures. In 2016, her postdoctoral work also took her to the German Historical Institute in Washington, D.C. From 2013-2018, Christa Wirth held the position of Senior Assistant Professor at the University of Zurich in Prof. Dr. Monika Dommann's Department of History (HS), before she then moved to the University of Agder in Kristiansand, Norway, as Associate Professor of History (1750-present) in 2018. She has been Professor of History (1750-present) there since 2022.
Research Interests
- History of the Cold War
- Decolonization
- migration
- transnational history of the USA
Selected Lectures
“Methods of the History of Knowledge: How to Apply the Insights of the History of Knowledge to Our Own Research.” Doctoral Workshop: Methods and Theory in the History of Knowledge // Perspectives from the Sources, Doctoral Program History of Knowledge ETH Zurich/Uni Zurich, May 2022.
“A Chicago School of Philippine Studies? Traveling and Contested Modernization between Manila and Chicago, 1950s-1970s.” University of Bergen: Research Group for Transnational History and Cultural Encounters, 1850 – present, February 2022.
“The Nexus of Agency – Knowledge in Migration Studies”, together with Barbara Lüthi at Conference, The Minnesota School in Europe, Vienna, February 2020.
“Knowledge and Complicity: A Chicago Anthropologist at the Nexus the Cold War and Decolonization in the Philippines”, Seminar History of Knowledge, St. Andrews University, November 2019.
“Migrations and Nations: Historical Perspectives on Current Border Crossings” Keynote lecture. Norwegian National History Days, June 2018.
“Cold War Knowledge: Social Science Between Manila and Chicago, History of Knowledge, Kunskapshistoriska seminaret”, Lund University, Sweden, December 2018.
Selected Publications
Christa Wirth, Josephine Munch Rasmussen (2023). The Value of Forgeries for Historical Research. In: Brodie, Neil, Kersel, Morag, Rasmussen Josephine Munch (eds.). Variant Scholarship: Ancient Texts in Modern Contexts, Leiden: Sidestone Press, pp. 169-187. forthcoming
Christa Wirth (2021). The Anthropologist as Deviant Modernizer: Felipe Landa Jocanoʼs Journey through the Cold War, the Social Sciences, Decolonization, and Nation Building in the Philippines. In: Solovey, Mark, Dayé, Christian (Eds.). Cold War Social Science: Transnational Entanglements. Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 161-189.
Christa Wirth (2018). The Creation of a Postcolonial Subject: The Chicago and Ateneo de Manila Schools and the Peace Corps in the Philippines, 1960-1970. The Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, 54, pp. 5-24.
You can find the full list of publications here.