University of Heidelberg

PhD Projects

Zoonoses, History, and Risk Perception

Cornelia Knab
Since the mid-nineteenth century, animal diseases and epizootics became serious challenges for the nation states and their established concepts of boundaries, especially when being transmissible to humans. New forms of international cooperation – both governmental and non-governmental – were started to deal with the transboundary threats of animal diseases and zoonoses. The project looks at the variety of stakeholder networks involved in the problem of risk assessment in the animal disease problem, and the question of inclusion and exclusion in processes of international decision-making in the first half of the twentieth century.

Japan and the networks of intellectual cooperation

Maya Okuda
This project focuses on Japanese archival sources discussing the position of Japan in the League’s Commission of Intellectual Cooperation (CICI), a forerunner of the UNESCO. Since national organisations (e.g. the Society for International Cultural Relations, founded in 1934) prepared the official Japanese foreign cultural policy, this participation and its consequences are of special interest.

The global sound of music

Christiane Sibille
Different IO and the League of Nations’ Commission Internationale de Coopération Intellectuelle discussed the border-crossing aspect of music by networking musicians, supporting copyright protection, and by initiating folk music research. Global compatibility is questioned with the introduction of international standards including the determination of a sound and diapason system as well as rules for national music editions. On the one hand these standards aimed to overcome an Eurocentric approach, on the other hand, they confirmed European traditions.