Learn
Global history
Students begin by examining historical problems, primary sources and global processes.
Research
New Frontiers of Global Research.
GHL is a platform for connected and collaborative research on how societies create narratives that make sense of the world.
Research in Public
From classroom questions to shared historical knowledge.
The Lab’s public work connects teaching, research and storytelling. Students and researchers investigate how people understand change, how narratives travel and how local experiences become part of wider historical accounts.
Outputs range from oral-history projects and multimedia stories to collaborative research, recorded conversations, books and public essays.
Global History Dialogues
Where student research becomes public history.
Global History Dialogues is the next step after History of the World and Qualitative Research Methods.
It gives students a dedicated platform to develop, publish and share original research with audiences beyond the classroom.
Projects connect local experiences to global historical questions through oral history, written research, images, documentary work, audio and multimedia storytelling.
Investigate
Research methods
They develop ethical skills in interviewing, archives, visual evidence and project design.
Create
Original projects
Learners investigate questions rooted in their communities and lived experiences.
Share
Public dialogue
Completed work enters an international collection of student-led historical research.
The Global History Dialogues Project
Student research beyond the classroom
Local Stories, Global Questions
Research shaped by place, memory and lived experience.
Student projects explore contemporary and historical issues through oral testimony, qualitative research and collaborative storytelling.
By placing local evidence alongside work from other regions, Global History Dialogues demonstrates how individual experiences connect to migration, conflict, identity, integration, exclusion, memory and wider global change.
- Oral-history interviews
- Written historical research
- Photography and visual evidence
- Audio and video storytelling
- Collaborative and comparative projects
Continuing the Research Journey
From Global History Dialogues to Narrative Observatories.
Global History Dialogues allows student work to reach public audiences. Narrative Observatories extends this pathway by inviting graduates and researchers to collaborate on live questions about narrative, belonging, exclusion and power.
Explore Narrative ObservatoriesNarrative Observatories
Making sense of the narratives that make global history.
Narrative Observatories are the hubs of the Global History Lab’s international research network, investigating how storytelling affects history as events unfold.
Rapid Response History
How does storytelling affect history?
Narrative Observatories are the hubs of the Global History Lab’s international research network. Observers from around the world, trained in the GHL curriculum, investigate how narratives shape politics, identity, conflict, technology and everyday life.
They are committed to Rapid Response History, collecting and analysing data on how stories affect events as they unfold. Narrative Observatories provide analysis and insight into how those stories shape the meaning of events as part of history-making.
Join GHL's Narrative Observatories!
Observe
Researchers identify emerging narratives within their own communities.
Collect
Stories and experiences are documented using shared qualitative methods.
Compare
Researchers explore similarities and differences across countries and contexts.
Understand
The network builds a wider understanding of how narratives shape society and events.
Observatory Themes
Four initial lenses for observing stories in motion.
Each theme allows researchers to investigate local narratives while contributing to shared comparative questions.
Emergency
How stories emerge and circulate during crisis, displacement and disruption.
Integration
Narratives of settlement, belonging, adaptation and exclusion across communities.
Polarisation
How narratives divide communities, shape identities and influence public life.
Reconciliation
How stories can repair relationships and help communities imagine shared futures.
BUGSSS
Bottom-up, globally scaled social science.
The Observatories do not rely on a single institution, location or national perspective. Researchers collectively generate knowledge from many communities while using a shared framework for comparison.
This makes local knowledge central to the research process and creates a richer understanding of global challenges.
GHL TV
Podcasts, guest lectures, and public conversations from across the Global History Lab network.
Watch and listen to discussions that are open to all. Complementing the courses taught at our partner institutions, these publicly accessible media extend the Lab’s teaching and research beyond the classroom.
Visit the GHL YouTube Channel
GHL TV Introduction
Beyond the Classroom
Knowledge exchange open to a global audience.
Watch and listen to discussions that are open to all. Complementing the courses taught at our partner institutions, these publicly accessible media bring together students, teachers, researchers, journalists, artists and practitioners.
They explore themes including war and peace, memory, social change and movements, displacement and statelessness, gender, documentary photography, journalism, and the narratives that shape historical understanding. Together, these discussions extend the Lab's teaching and research beyond the classroom, making knowledge exchange accessible to a global audience.
Dialogues Podcast
Conversations around the themes shaping student research.
The podcast explores war and peace, memory, social change and movements, displacement and statelessness.
Dialogues Podcast
War and Peace
Episode 1 · 3 November 2025
Dialogues Podcast
Memory
Episode 2 · 3 December 2025
Dialogues Podcast
Social Change and Movements
Episode 3 · 23 January 2026
Dialogues Podcast
Displacement and Statelessness
Episode 4 · 12 February 2026
Guest Lectures
Guest Lectures for the Qualitative Research Methods Course
Guest Lecture
Qualitative Research Methods
Guest Lecture
Qualitative Research Methods
Public Conversations
Events, interviews and discussions.
The wider media collection features conversations among Global History Lab collaborators and with experts from other institutions. Through event recordings and podcasts, it highlights the exchange of ideas on geopolitics, war, memory, documentary and journalism. This collection shows the Lab's reach and impact beyond its courses.
Publications
Books, essays and articles shaped by global history and collaboration.
Selected publications explore narrative, identity, displacement, empire, borders and the production of historical knowledge.
A Growing Body of Work
Research that continues beyond the classroom.
The publication collection brings together academic books, edited volumes, public essays and collaborative articles connected to the Lab’s themes and teaching network.
Some works emerge directly from Global History Lab activity. Others reflect the wider intellectual questions surrounding narrative, displacement, identity, empire and global historical knowledge.
Featured Publications
Books and edited collections connected to the Lab’s themes.
Global history
Worlds Together,
Worlds Apart A History of Humankind
Worlds Apart A History of Humankind
Book
Worlds Together, Worlds Apart
Jeremy Adelman (ed.), W. W. Norton, 6th edition, 2021.
View publication
Global South
Inventing the
Third World Freedom in the Cold War Global South
Third World Freedom in the Cold War Global South
Edited volume
Inventing the Third World
Jeremy Adelman and Gyan Prakash (eds.), Bloomsbury, 2022.
View publicationStudent research
Border-
Crossing Stories, research and dialogue
Crossing Stories, research and dialogue
Edited volume
Border-Crossing
Marcia C. Schenck (ed.), Universitätsverlag Potsdam, 2024.
View publicationGlobal narratives
Narratives,
Nations and Other World Products
Nations and Other World Products
Edited volume
A World of Narratives
Jeremy Adelman and Andreas Eckert (eds.), Bloomsbury, 2024.
View publicationPublication Archive
Books, public essays and collaborative articles.
A wider selection of work currently highlighted by Global History Lab.
Worldly Philosopher: The Odyssey of Albert O. Hirschman
Jeremy Adelman
View bookI Won’t Let Them Be Like Me
Richard Latham Lechowick · Ezidi women’s agency and identity after the Sinjar genocide
View bookHistory from the Edge
Elvira Viktória Tamus · Teaching global history in a Ugandan refugee settlement
View articleEchoes of Communism
A cross-cultural reflection produced collaboratively by GHL contributors
View articleStudent Protests Around the World
A collaborative comparative study involving students and contributors
View articleImperialism, Colonialism and Student Politics
A comparative public-history study produced across different contexts
View articleTeaching and Learning Global History Between Beirut and Cambridge
Aayushi Gupta, Hadil Ibrahim Maddah and Ghiwa Naem
View article
Beyond Formal Publication
Ideas carried through many formats.
The Lab’s outputs are not limited to academic books. Student work, collaborative essays, recorded conversations, podcasts and public events all help make global history available beyond any single classroom or institution.
BooksArticlesStudent researchVideoPodcastsPublic events