The department of International History at Trier University examines the history of entanglements and networks of global actors and ideas as well as the emergence of transnational and translocal spaces of social interaction.

Our research and teaching focusses on the history of migration, colonial history, environmental history, and the history of international relations. Correspondingly, we pursue a multiplicity of methodological-theoretical approaches, depending on the historical object of investigation, ranging from approaches based on the history of transfer and entangled history, methods grounded in the history of migration, postcolonial perspectives, or approaches based on the political and diplomatic history. Temporally speaking, we are interested in processes from the late 18th century (the Age of Atlantic Revolutions) to contemporary history (e.g. international terrorism). We investigate at historical phenomena at the micro, meso, as well as the macro level.

Geographical foci of research and teaching at Trier are:

• the Atlantic region with special emphasis on North America (USA and Canada: colonial history, settlement history, environmental history, history of transatlantic relations and American foreign policy),
• the Asia-Pacific region (South and Southeast Asia, Oceania, Australia and New Zealand: colonial history of the British Empire, American-Asian relations in the second half of the 20th century).