Where does your interest in history come from? What made you decide to pursue history?
I guess my interest in history really started, as it did with many young Germans of my generation, in school. In the late 1980s, when I attended the last years of high school, our teachers, who mostly belonged to the ‘68 generation, very actively encouraged us to engage with the darker sides of the German past, with National Socialism, the Shoah, and the lack of German reckoning with that part of our history. That got me hooked, and I followed up on that interest, even before I started to study history. Now, I'm from Nuremberg in Southern Germany, which is a city marked by the echoes of this past and by its close connection to the history of the Nazi regime and its crimes: it is the city of the big Nazi Party Rallies, of the Nuremberg Racial Laws and the Nuremberg Trials. In the early 1990s I did an internship with Geschichte für Alle, one of the organizations that have been offering guided tours around the party rally grounds. Later on, when I studied in Munich, I worked as a guide for visitors at the former Dachau concentration camp memorial site. So in parallel, my interest throughout the earlier stages of my studies in history was mainly in German history, and in particular in the Nazi past. I should mention, however, that when I started university, I did not enroll in a history program first; instead I started with geography. That was a reflection, I think, of another interest of mine in broader global issues, for example development policy. In the beginning, geography just appealed to me because it offered such a broad perspective on topics of global scope, and the courses ranged from geology and the climate to urban planning and economics. At some point though, it was precisely this breadth that became a source of slight dissatisfaction; I felt I wanted to go deeper into something, so I decided to switch to history. Initially, I pursued a double program in conjunction with geography. Then, I spent half a year in Italy on an Erasmus exchange program, where I studied contemporary history, after which I fully transitioned to studying history at Munich.
As you mentioned, your background is quite interdisciplinary. Since this issue of Fortid is centered around the concepts of borders and boundaries: How do you feel that the knowledge you’ve gained from these fields, maybe especially geography, has aided you as a historian?
Well, there are some topics that have interested me early on; international politics, development, and so on. And to get a broad perspective on these topics, to study geography and also political science, was no doubt useful, not so much methodologically, but perhaps in a more general way and because some of the topics, like international development or decolonization were more prominent than they were in the average history program at the time. I came initially to international history because I was looking to integrate the themes that interested me beside German history into my studies. It was only during my Ph.D. on the ILO and decolonization that I began to systematically consider what constitutes international history and what specific methods are used in its study. And it was also only then that I realized that international history was still very much separate from the way people working on cross-border social movements, on migration were working. It was really mainly diplomatic history that dominated. And that is something that has definitely changed during the last 20, 30 years. It has reached a point where it's almost unthinkable to do international history without including, in one way or another, a transnational perspective on things. For me personally, these impulses from transnational history in the study of internationalism, for instance of the role of expert networks, epistemic communities, including a gender dimension, and so on, have been very important, often opening up new perspectives on the very same sources I was already working with, but also encouraging me to look beyond them. And to a certain degree it is also working the other way around, so that in my newer research which has been mainly on humanitarian aid (of US Quakers in the inter-war years) and which falls more in the field of transnational history, it is helpful to see how these actors navigate the world of nation states and diplomacy.
In fact I would say the boundaries between international and transnational history have blurred to the benefit in particular of the former. And that's a good thing. It makes for much more interesting reads also.
You helped to launch the master program here at UiO called MITRA; Modern International and Transnational History, which is centered around international institutions and organizations, but also international and transnational history. With a focus on the function of borders, how would you define international and transnational history for those who don't know about these fields?
The way I usually start in my teaching is just to follow the etymology of the words, with “Inter” being Latin for “between” and “trans” meaning “across”. And just that captures the difference, I think, quite well. In international history you're traditionally interested mostly in the relationship between states while in transnational history you're interested in border crossing activities, of people, ideas, commodities and so on. But as I said - and I think this is a great development! – the boundaries between the two approaches are in reality not as strict as they used to be twenty, thirty years ago. In fact I would say the boundaries between international and transnational history have blurred to the benefit in particular of the former. And that's a good thing. It makes for much more interesting reads also.
When writing international history, there's a risk of generalizing and oversimplifying history as you try to convey it. Is there a way to avoid this, or is this a problem at all? And maybe on the opposite end, is there an advantage to writing international histories as opposed to specialized local ones?
Let me maybe answer this with a view to the MITRA program that you were mentioning in the beginning of our conversation. One of the major aims and ideas behind such a program focusing on histories beyond the nation state was to bring together a local and an international, a transnational and a global dimension, by making use of the local assets that we have close at hand, such as the Norwegian tradition of peace, represented for example by the Nobel Peace Prize or the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), the Norwegian oil industry, the Norwegian welfare state and all those things that are generally considered to be distinctly Norwegian or Nordic. These being at the same time invariably connected to international or global processes and dynamics. This is an ongoing project. I feel that a lot has changed in the last years with regard to the general openness to take such a broad and entangled view of Norwegian history – which in itself is of course part of a global development, that finds parallel in most other nations, towards acknowledgement of the global connections that partly have shaped one’s own country, an engagement with colonial pasts for instance. It's obvious that almost every field we can study on a local or national level will benefit from including a transnational perspective. That applies, for example, to the 17th of May and how the national day is celebrated, or the fascinating history of the Norwegian taco. The adaptation of tacos to the point where they have become almost a Norwegian dish—or, better yet, are a Norwegian dish—is a good piece of transnational history that has, of course, already been written. As has the history of the 17th of May in comparison to other national days, which, if I am not mistaken, is the subject of one of the Ph.D. dissertations currently being written at our institute. Anyway, I feel that if there is still some resistance to these kinds of transnational perspectives, it is often based on a misunderstanding, as if the point was to deny the particularity of certain aspects of Norwegian or Nordic culture – which is generally not the case! It is always a matter of making the connections visible, but ultimately also the differences. The resistance to transnational perspectives therefore often appears mostly symbolic to me, serving as a way to fend off an overly globalizing trend so as to not lose identity on the way. On the contrary, I believe that if you look into these transnational connections, you can gain a much better and differentiated view of what shapes a society like Norway and what connects the individuals living in it, something that cannot be provided by any kind of national «kanon». This can be applied to most current debates I would say! I have recently been part of an interdisciplinary project that inquired about the impact of algorithmic governance in the workplace on the Norwegian model of workplace democracy. This model is among the most advanced in the world, and some would even claim it to be the most advanced, and I found it striking to see the degree to which the history of this model is a very transnational one. In building the model, Norwegians learned from external experiences and ideas, from British social scientists in particular, and subsequently contributed their perspectives and experiences to international discussions. So it is most definitely Norwegian, but at the same time, if you want to study the impact of external factors on the development of that model you still have to look beyond the Norwegian borders to get a clear idea of how it's special in its present form and how it might be more or less resilient than other models to some of the challenges, global and local ones, that it faces.
How do you think this international and transnational approach influences how we study history? And do you think this affects more than just modern history? Does it have sort of an interdisciplinary effect as well?
Well, I would definitely say it has an interdisciplinary effect. First of all, I do think that other disciplines can learn something from us, of course I do! To use the historical method, to accept historical contingency and that people at all times faced the future with various options at hand, is among these. Of course it is also the other way round. We profit enormously from including different disciplinary perspectives, from anthropology, sociology, to name just two that have been important to me in the past. The other side of the question, regarding what influence the transnational approach has on our approach to the study of history, is more complicated. As a transnational historian, I think my expertise begins and ends with a definition of transnationalism that is tied to the emergence of the nation state in the 19th century. While I think it's perfectly legitimate to talk about transnational histories before that, I do think that's more for global historians than for me; when one tries to bring together international and transnational history, I think it's really important to insist that these fields presuppose the existence of the nation state – or, at the very least the fully developed concept of the nation state.
Do you think that transnational history as an approach is something new within the last decades? Or do you feel like there's always been this sort of transnational approach in historical research, but that it's more in recent decades that such an approach has been sort of concretized and conceptualized in a way?
Definitely, there were predecessors and people who were interested in the topics that interest transnational historians, even before the First World War. However, for the present transnational approach, I think you need to look into the history of historiography in the last 20-30 years and the turn to these border-crossing accounts that came with globalization, as a reaction to all the talk about globalization that took off from the 1990s onwards. Historiographical trends themselves always respond to and reflect specific historical contexts. So, globalization and all the discourse around it came with an interest in the agents of globalization, and that automatically influenced the field. If you look to some of the founding texts for transnational historians, like Akira Iriye’s Global Community, they could be quite close to international history or diplomatic history. It has after all also been a matter of finding and using the right sources for this approach, where some, among them some of my colleagues here in Oslo, had to be very innovative. Personally, I was influenced by authors like Glenda Sluga, Susan Pedersen, Patricia Clavin, and also Mark Mazower, who have all tried to write these histories of international organizations moving beyond the diplomats, or even better, opening new perspectives on these diplomats by using a transnational perspective and new archival material to gain a deeper understanding of the mechanisms of internationalism and international cooperation. Reading their works also raised questions that have remained relevant: What languages do I have to speak? What networks do I have to build with other scholars? Both are particularly important, because no one can work on these international and transnational topics on their own!
This goes for all good history-writing, I believe, but it is particularly true for transnational history, not only because of the language barriers. You have to go to conferences that might not be directly relevant to your topic. I was always privileged in that regard, especially with the ILO topic. When I started to work on the ILO, there were not many other people doing that. It was kind of a niche topic. This has changed completely in the last 20 years. But at that time, whenever I handed in a paper for a conference on whatever topic, I was always invited. And it was probably not because of the quality of the paper, but because people thought, "Oh, this is interesting from an ILO perspective, from an international organization perspective on development aid, or on human rights policy, on this and that, on economic policy, on planning, on whatever." And for me, to connect with the people and their networks, helped me a lot because it opened up new ways of seeing my own research, its restrictions, the narrowness of my perspective and its shortcomings, and gave me a much broader view of my topic, so I could come back again to my original focus with new insights.
You recently published a book on American Quakers and international humanitarian aid. How did you find that the application of internationalism and transnationalism contributed to your research and to writing this history of humanitarian aid?
This question came to me quite late in the game, which probably has to do with the way most historians, including myself, go about introductions, which is at the very end of the whole process. So after writing all the chapters and even the conclusion, you sit down to write one of these very dull introductions in which you also define your approach - that is at least an old German tradition! So it was only at the end of a long writing process that I tried to position my work between the two fields of international and transnational history.
Seriously, I think humanitarianism is a perfect example of how the two can go together and how the two sides can offer different perspectives. Because the story of Quaker humanitarianism is first of all a story of a religious group of people who in many respects are very strongly rooted in a US national context, but who at the same time are shaped in their thinking and actions by their transnational connections to Quakers in other countries, as well as to the recipients of their aid beyond the US borders. Crossing borders does something to their way of thinking and to their actions. At the same time its coming of age as a humanitarian organization took place in the inter-war years, which saw the emergence of a system of international humanitarian aid, with mechanisms of relief being established through organizations like the League of Nations or the International Red Cross. And the NGOs, like the Quaker groups I wrote about, that work with these international organizations, have to adapt and they have to become internationally minded themselves, have to learn to speak the language of diplomacy, so to speak. So, in studying Quaker humanitarianism it felt only natural to combine a transnational and an international approach. In the case of humanitarianism, it's very clear that the more interesting sources, the ones where you get closer to real people and their thoughts about what they are, what they do, come from the transnational side of things – with Quaker aid workers writing letters to each other, talk about conflicts, talk about everything. Whereas when they enter the diplomatic scene, all of a sudden that disappears behind a different language which is more restrained. The task then is to get these sources to “speak” to each other. I found that a challenge, but also one of the most interesting aspects of this book.
Now that your book is out, do you want to talk a little bit about what your next big project is? What are you working on right now?
Yes, in my newest project I partly revisit and depart from the ILO frame. It's about discussions around working conditions and the transformations in the world of work from the 1970s onwards. What I am most interested in, is a history of the present, how the experience of work changed in my parents' and my own generation's time. This involves questions about the quality of our working lives and how we measure it, how people experience, for instance, their opportunities or lack of opportunities to have a say in their work place, to participate in decision making, how they experience control and surveillance, but of course also the political, economic, cultural and psychological frameworks in which normal people’s work lives are situated. One of my main interests is in how the experience of work shapes our perceptions of democracy: whether work life is experienced as an extension of democratic procedures in society at large or on the contrary, whether the experience of a lack of influence or participation, of control and maybe alienation in the workplace reflects back on the perceptions of democracy.
You have researched quite grim chapters of recent history. As a historian of modern history, how does one set healthy boundaries, considering the current state of the world? Is it possible to have a good healthy work-life balance as a historian?
One answer would be: I have done a lot of puzzles in the last few years, for leisure and to relax, maybe because of that. But no, it's actually funny that you ask that, because when I started working on the ILO in the early 2000s, I actually turned from looking at truly dark aspects of history to the «brighter» side. In my studies up to that point, I had focused on the Nazi past, including in my master's thesis, which was about the debate of the South Tyrol question between German nationalist and right-wing extremist groups during the 1920s. But ever since I started working on my Ph.D., I have shifted my focus to organizations and individuals whose aims and purposes I largely agree with and can support to a certain degree.
That goes for the ILO, its work for international labor standards, for social human rights and it also is true for my work on humanitarianism, and on the Quakers in particular, who have very often been a positive force in the world. So maybe the challenge is more about how to maintain a critical distance as a historian from these issues that you support in principle, and that is, of course, a problem that you do not have when you work on the dark side of history.
Perhaps the study of history and its contribution to contemporary debates is precisely to show that there are always alternatives and different paths that can be taken in any given historical context.
But still, of course, how to stay healthy while working with rather dark histories is a fair question, because through the lens of the ILO or the Quakers, the dark sides become visible as well. If there are any positive lessons to be learned from history - and I generally don't think there are many that can be applied directly - one clear one is that even when things look extremely gloomy and determined to go bad, there is always an alternative, there are always alternative roads, and most of the problems we are dealing with are about political choices. And so, in that sense, perhaps the study of history and its contribution to contemporary debates is precisely to show that there are always alternatives and different paths that can be taken in any given historical context. And even when things go completely wrong (as they are in many ways at the moment), the notion of a potential alternative, and that the future is always open, might be something to take comfort in.
Could you elaborate on the role the historian has in society in this regard?
I am afraid I cannot provide a really coherent answer. At the most general level, I think that historians are quite good at adding complexity and depth to current debates, but I am not so sure that this is always in high demand, and we are certainly not good enough at making our insights accessible. This may be less the case with the wars and conflicts of our time, where historians remain present, but it is certainly the case with some of the other "hot topics" of the present. Perhaps the growing role that AI and algorithms are playing in our daily lives, not least at work, is a good example of this. This semester I taught a course at UiO on the interaction of humans and technology in the past, which I think was a great experience for everyone involved, not least for me, who learned a lot during the semester. I think one of the insights that emerged from the course was that all questions of immediate interest in our present—how big tech and technologies like smartphones or online shopping tools have made our lives easier in some ways and more problematic in others, or the question of resistance to new technology—always have a historical dimension. People have faced analogous questions before, and engaging with those experiences can help us better assess the options before us.
However, there is very little, if any, involvement of historians in the public debate, and I think that is a shame. Historians have a role to play with regard to nearly all the pressing issues we face today. Take migration, take social inequality, take the future of the welfare state. There is always a historical dimension to these questions. None of those debates started yesterday. We have the dual task of pointing out the complexity, which we sometimes even have to insist on, but we also have to make this complexity accessible to a broader audience. It's a good question, actually, why this contribution is lacking. We have to be totally fair, of course: we have many colleagues here who are on television and in other media who do this very, very important job right now, on Gaza, on Ukraine, on economic policy issues and so on. I would just argue that we should not shy away from also entering the debate on those topics where it does not seem yet natural to include historians in the conversation.
Do you have any advice for students of history?
My advice is simply to have a broad and open interest in history. If you start with an interest in politics, international or national, that's totally fine. But one of the things you should be open to, is to engage with different perspectives: social, economic, cultural, transnational, international, global, from below and from above, and I could continue endlessly. Ours is a discipline that is enormously rich in these various approaches and perspectives. And if you study here at the University of Oslo, you will find this breadth reflected in the courses that you attend and the teachers and supervisors you will encounter. Surely to systematically expose yourself to and train yourself in this openness in the course of your studies will equip you with something that will help you at all stages of your future career and maybe even in life more generally?
