Overview

Current Research Projects

Co-ordinator: Prof. Dr. Gerhard Dannemann

The Common Frame of Reference for European Contract Law and its Interaction with English and German Law

This joint research project on European Contract Law is co-headed by Professor Dannemann, Centre for British Studies, and Professor Stefan Vogenauer of the Institute of European and Comparative Law, University of Oxford. The project is co-funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft and the Arts and Humanities Research Council. Over a period of three years, a group of 40 legal scholars will investigate the proposed Common Frame of Reference for European Contract Law (CFR) and its interaction with domestic laws, as exemplified in this project by English and German law. The participating researchers will cover some twenty different aspects of the CFR by working in teams of one British and one German author each. The project funding also covers the creation of a database on the CFR, which will be made publicly accessible on the project website. The results of this project are expected to be published in two volumes. The first will consist of a analysis of the general impact of the CFR on the domestic laws of England and Germany, whereas the second volume will focus on the possible implications of so-called "blue button" contracts which would allow consumers in cross-border distance sales to choose CFR based rules rather than the domestic law of the business.

Contributors to the project include present and former centre staff Professor Gerhard Dannemann, Irene Maier, Christopher Schuller, Kasper Steensgaard and Professor Helmut Weber.

Co-ordinators: Prof. Dr. Christiane Eisenberg and Prof. Dr. Gesa Stedman

Connections and Connectivity

Comparative research in the humanities, especially in the area of social research, both contemporary and historical has enjoyed a significant upturn since the 1970s. A great number of comparisons have been made between Great Britain and Germany in particular. In addition to comparative research, further studies since the 1990s, among them several by the Centre's staff, have dealt with the phenomenon of cultural transfers which – often unintentionally – go along with encounters between 'indigenous' and 'foreign' countries . This branch of research transcends the comparative tradition insofar as scholars do not simply enquire into similarities, differences and, from time to time, increases or decreases in distance. They also conduct an analysis of exchange relations, media and mediators between states and societies in the course of the growing interest in questions concerning Europeanisation and globalisation.
In the coming years researchers at the Centre for British Studies want to include a further aspect which, as a result of the connection between comparative and transfer research, will increasingly force itself into the foreground of research practice: connectivity problems between states, societies, economies and cultures. What we mean by this are failed cultural transfers and broken-off communications, as well as strategies of avoidance and rejection in the course of transnational processes. We would also like to examine British connectivity with Germany and compare the problems of British-German connectivity with other cases. And we want to do our part in ensuring that a general academic exchange comes into being in the area of connectivity research.
The project was launched at a workshop conference in Berlin in June 2009.

Co-ordinator: Prof. Dr. Gesa Stedman

Cultural Exchange

Prof Dr Gesa Stedman is currently preparing her new book for publication. It focuses on Anglo-French relations in the 17th century and on women as cultural mediators. It will be published by Ashgate in 2010. She also co-hosted a conference on cultural exchange and edited a volume of the Journal for the Study of British Culture http://www.jsbc.de on cultural exchange.

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Co-ordinators: Prof. Dr. Christiane Eisenberg

Commerce and Culture - The British Experience

Several scholars carried out research projects in this subject during the last few years. They placed a special emphasis on the cultural industries which developed much earlier in Britain than in other European countries and are today among the fastest growing parts of the economy. Research focuses on the one hand on the 17th, 18th and early 19th centuries, since Britain was a fully developed commercial society even in pre-industrial times and this commercial tradition has shaped industrial society up to the present day. On the other hand, the projects also examine the present tendencies of internationalisation and globalisation. An underlying question is whether the early rise of a commercial society is an asset or a burden as regards successful development in the long run.

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Prof. Dr. Gerhard Dannemann

Existing EC Private Law

Professor Dannemann is one of the founding members of the European Research Group on EC Private Law (Acquis Group). Founded in 2002, this Group currently consists of some 50 legal scholars from most EU member states. The Acquis Group aims to achieve a systematic arrangement of what already exists in community law in the area of private law. The Acquis Group bases its work on this acquis communautaire of private law rules and aims to distill from this principles and rules which will help to define the common structures of an emerging community private law. Within this group, Professor Dannemann heads both the Redaction Committee and the Terminology Group. To date, the Acquis Group has published two volumes of "Principles of the Existing EC Contract Law"in 2007 and 2009; a third and final book is expected for 2011. Further information can be obtained at: http://www.acquis-group.org.

Prof. Dr. Christiane Eisenberg and Prof. Peter Clark (University of Helsinki) et al.

Sport and Green Space in the Modern and Contemporary European City

This project is organised by a European network of scholars investigating Sport and Green Space in the Modern and Contemporary City from an interdisciplinary and comparative perspective. Historians, ecologists, geographers and sociologists from Finland, Sweden, Germany and Britain, established academics as well as graduate students are co-operating with respect to the following goals: (1) to organise a pilot project to study the development of sports parks and golf courses in four major cities in four European countries in the 20th century from a historical, social and ecological perspective. (2) to look at the growth of sport parks and grounds from the First World War, the reasons for that growth, and how it has contributed to urban biodiversity; it will also consider how changing attitudes to sport and recent reductions and alterations in the area and types of sport space in some cities may have had an adverse effect. (3) to develop an integrated methodological approach for ecologists, historians, geographers and sociologists. In the longer term it is planned to widen the project and to test the preliminary findings and methodology against a longer and more varied sample of urban centres and for this purpose to obtain funding from the research foundations.

Prof. Dr. Christiane Eisenberg

British History

During her sabbatical in summer 2006 Professor Eisenberg continued to write a book-length manuscript on Britain as a commercial society which covers the period from 1066 to the 20th century. Although focusing on general topics, this research places a special emphasis on the cultural industries which developed much earlier in Britain than in other European countries and are today among the fastest growing parts of the economy. She has also edited a volume “Britain as a Model of Modern Society – German Views” together with Arnd Bauerkämper, Free University Berlin. The volume brings together the contributions of a British-German conference in Berlin, July 2004.

Postdoctoral Projects

The GBZ further hosts a number of ongoing PhD-projects concerning British culture, history, law and the UK economy. Information on several of these projects is available here.

PhD Projects

The GBZ further hosts a number of ongoing PhD-projects concerning British culture, history, law and the UK economy. Information on several of these projects is available here.

Completed Research Projects (selection)

Prof. Dr. Gerhard Dannemann

Unjust Enrichment and Restitution

Professor Dannemann has published a monograph which places the German law of unjust enrichment and restitution in a comparative context, with a particular focus on English law. The book was published with Oxford University press.

Prof. Dr. Gerhard Dannemann

Accidental Discrimination in the Conflict of Laws

Cases connected to different legal systems can get a rough ride, simply because applicable rules are not dovetailed to each other. This is frequently the case if one of the systems involved belongs to the common law and the other to the civil law world. In combination, they can produce results which are not intended by either system involved – insufficient maintenance or benefits, heirs receiving more or less than they should, criminals punished too harshly, marriages which cannot be dissolved, cases which no court wants to hear. A research project devoted to this topic was completed during 2003. The results were published in 2004 as a monograph entitled: Die ungewollte Diskriminierung in der internationalen Rechtsanwendung. Zur Anwendung, Berücksichtigung und Anpassung von Normen aus unterschiedlichen Rechtsordnungen. In this book, the author argues that courts are empowered to modify or ignore applicable rules in order to avoid such accidental discrimination, to the degree that, under higher ranking principles of equality of treatment, legislators would be prevented from deliberately discriminating in international cases. On the other hand, criticism will be directed against Continental doctrine and court practice which seeks to give the same far-reaching powers to courts in other complex international situations. As a backdrop to the issue of accidental discrimination, this project also deals with the following topics: (1) Public International Law influences on Conflict of Laws, (2) why and how norms which are not applicable according to conflict rules may nevertheless influence the outcome of a case, and (3) the international sphere of application of domestic, European and international human rights provisions. A summary of the findings of this project was published as: Accidental Discrimination in the Conflict of Laws: Applying, Considering, and Adjusting Rules From Different Jurisdictions, in: Yearbook of Private International Law, Vol X (2008), 113-134.

Prof. Dr. Jürgen Schlaeger

Structures of Cultural Transformations

Cultures are characterised by the different ways in which they have developed their own systems of representation, of moral and aesthetic values, of behavioural standards, of everyday practices and have set up the institutional arrangements which make possible as well as regulate these processes. Both, the existing cultural paradigms as well as the ways in which they transform themselves, are time and culture specific. Openness or resistance to external influences, the structures of the relationship between various areas of cultural activities, between ‘high’ and popular cultures, the strategies with which they practise amalgamation and exclusion, recognition of indebtedness or denial of it, continuity and change – these are some of the aspects which define the structure of a particular culture at any given time. The project will discuss the methodological and theoretical implications involved in the attempt to define and analyse cultural paradigms and it will do that by a combination of general reflection and a range of case studies.

Prof. Dr. Jürgen Schlaeger  

Cultural Theory, Cognition Research and the Neurosciences

Recent developments in Cognition Research and the Neurosciences have opened up the prospect of a fundamental revision of the two cultures debate which centred round the conviction that mind and matter constitute objects of investigation whose methods are completely different and whose results cannot be translated into each other without losing what is essential to each of them. Mind and brain – two concepts which have been closely linked up with the two different notions of reality, which had been operated in the humanities on the one hand and the natural sciences on the other, no longer seem to be mutually exclusive. Memory and Memetics, neuronal processes and grid works of thought, parallelism between the phylogenetic and the ontogenetic developments of mind and brain – they are no longer a dualism which forces us to make our choice for one of them before we proceed but they are the two sides of the same coin or, less metaphorically speaking, inseparably dependent on each other. The consequences of such a revision are momentous and difficult to gauge at present. But they are worth exploring and will hopefully produce a welcome re-evaluation of all aspects of culture as essential for what it means to be a human being – this time not as an insight which we arrive at once we have accepted the supposedly unbridgeable gap between the sciences and the humanities but as the result of an intellectual pincer movement toward a reality that is both mind and matter.

Prof. Dr. Jürgen Schlaeger  

The Future of British Studies in Europe

Prof. Dr. Jürgen Schlaeger

Research Group on Emotions

This project dealt with the discourse on emotions and their representation in English literature.

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Prof. Dr. Jürgen Schlaeger

The Anthropological Turn in Literary Studies

Prof. Dr. Christiane Eisenberg, et al

100 Years of Football: The FIFA Centennial Book

Prof. Dr. Eisenberg co-authored this publication on the history of FIFA, the world footbal organisation. » Info

Prof. Dr. Helmut Weber

The Third Sector in Scotland, England & Wales, and Germany

This is a collaborative project between the Centre for British Studies and the Charity Law Research Unit, University of Dundee, Scotland. The objective of this project is to undertake a detailed comparison of the relevant statutory and case law in Scotland, England and Wales, and Germany with the aim of ascertaining the best way of enabling third sector organisations to fulfil their role in contemporary society.
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Prof. Dr. Christiane Eisenberg, ed.

Parliamentary Cultures in a Time of Change - British and German Perspectives

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Dr Roland Wenzlhuemer

Continuity and Change in the History of the Information Society

This research project examines the role of both continuity and change in the emergence of the so-called information society. Contemporary Western societies are often labelled knowledge or information societies. Information has become the single most important raw material of the age around which both economy and society redefine themselves. This rise of informationalism (Manuel Castells) is perceived as a consequence of the information revolution, a comparatively sudden and transformative process starting in the 1960s. Thus, abrupt change of revolutionary dimension seems to be the decisive factor in the emergence of the information society. This research project, however, seeks to examine the role of continuity as a balancing factor in that process. Examples of continuity can easily be observed in the growth and structure of the global communication network since the 19th century, which at times showed a surprising adherence to path-dependencies. This study will try to identify other spheres of the process in which continuity has been the primary shaping force. It will show how continuity and revolutionary change interact(ed) to bring about today’s information society. Great Britain and particularly the London area have stood at the very centre of the global telecommunications network since the 19th century and will thus provide the main case studies of this project. (Funded by the DFG and the DAAD.)