Explore Learning

Learning

Turning students into storytellers.

Global History Lab teaches history as a collaborative process of investigation, interpretation and storytelling. Students move from exploring the global past to designing original research and sharing new historical narratives.

Rather than learning as passive recipients, students work with sources, communities and peers across borders to become active producers of knowledge.

Global History Lab students presenting and discussing their work

Students do not simply study global history. They learn it globally.

Courses

Two connected courses, followed by original public research.

Students first develop a shared understanding of global history, then learn the methods needed to create and communicate research of their own.

In the History of the World course, designed by Professor Jeremy Adelman (University of Cambridge), students work in teams on shared historical problems and examine processes of integration, disintegration, and change across borders. Lectures, readings, and primary sources provide a common framework, while discussion allows different experiences and interpretations to enter the classroom.

Team findings are shared through a global gallery where students across the network can comment, compare, and collaborate. This means the course does not simply teach global history as a subject; it uses global exchange as part of the learning method.

Global history from 1300 to the present
Collaborative historical case studies
Primary-source analysis
Global gallery exchange
Local and distant peer learning

"My goodness! That Open House yesterday was amazing. This course keeps getting better, and I feel very blessed to be a part of it. Co-learning with my peers on Thursday is enlightening; yesterday's Open House widened the global aperture, and the depth of experience was rich.”

The Qualitative Research Methods course, designed by Professor Marcia C. Schenk (University of Potsdam), carries the exchange begun in History of the World one step further. Students learn to formulate research questions, identify appropriate evidence, consider feasibility, and conduct responsible research with people, stories, and communities.

The course combines oral history, documentary methods, visual sources, ethics, archiving and project planning. Students can explore themes such as migration, resettlement, integration, exclusion, memory, and identity while connecting local experience to global historical change.

Oral history and interviewing
Research ethics and informed consent
Documentary and visual methods
Archives and historical memory
Research questions and project design

After the Courses

Global History Dialogues

The next step in the Global History Lab journey.

Global History Dialogues builds on History of the World and Qualitative Research Methods by providing a dedicated platform where students can develop, publish and share original research with an international audience.

Projects use oral history, qualitative research and collaborative storytelling to investigate contemporary issues and show how individual or local experiences connect to wider historical processes.

Visit Global History Dialogues

Research & Methods

A practical toolkit for creating historical knowledge.

Students learn how to work critically, ethically and creatively with evidence, stories, communities and one another.

Participants working collaboratively with research materials

From Question to Project

Research rooted in local experience and global questions.

Methods training helps students move beyond receiving established accounts. Learners identify questions that matter in their own contexts, determine what evidence is available and develop projects capable of speaking to wider historical themes.

Research develops through workshops, peer comments, presentations and cross-border dialogue. This makes feedback and comparison part of the method rather than something added only at the end.

Historical Analysis

Students work critically with primary sources, case studies and competing interpretations to investigate change over time.

Oral History

Learners develop ethical interviewing, careful listening and storytelling practices attentive to memory, power and lived experience.

Documentary Methods

Students learn how recorded evidence is created, framed and used when constructing historical narratives.

Visual Sources

Still and moving images are examined as historical evidence rather than treated simply as illustration.

Research Ethics

Projects account for informed consent, responsibility to participants and the unequal relationships that research can create.

Research Design

Learners formulate questions, identify appropriate sources, assess feasibility and build structured project plans.

Peer Feedback

Ideas and findings develop through workshops, comments, presentations and dialogue across the wider Lab network.

Teaching Model

A hybrid classroom anchored by Teaching Fellows.

The Lab combines online learning with local teaching, team meetings and direct encounters between Teaching Fellows and students. Learners engage with shared global materials while remaining rooted in local classroom communities.

Teaching Fellows support discussion, teamwork, research development and feedback. Their role makes connected learning personal, rigorous and responsive to local context.

Online student research presentation with Global History Lab participants

Continuing the Journey

From Global History Dialogues to Narrative Observatories.

Global History Dialogues allows student research to reach wider audiences. Narrative Observatories then extends this pathway by enabling graduates and researchers to investigate how stories shape identity, belonging, exclusion and power as events unfold.

Observers work collaboratively across borders, collecting and comparing emerging narratives of emergency, integration, polarisation and reconciliation before they harden into dominant historical accounts.

Visit Global History Dialogues Explore Narrative Observatories

Global History Labs Students discussing research in a classroom

Turning students into storytellers.

A connected journey from learning history to producing it.

One programme, many local classrooms.