Dr. Roland Wenzlhuemer

Biography

Roland Wenzlhuemer studied history and communication science at the University of Salzburg, Austria, where he completed his doctorate in 2002 with a thesis on the agrarian economic transformation of the British crown colony of Ceylon in the late 19th century. Following his civil service, he held positions as a research assistant at the Zentrum Moderner Orient in Berlin and the Britain Centre at Humboldt University. In the fall of 2008, he took the lead of a junior research group established in the Cluster of Excellence 'Asia Europe Global Context' at Heidelberg University. His research there led to a study on the emergence and sociocultural significance of a global telegraph network in the 19th century, for which he submitted his habilitation at the Faculty of Philosophy at Heidelberg University in 2011, with his habilitation thesis published the following year by Cambridge University Press. In 2012, he received a Heisenberg Fellowship from the German Research Foundation. He was a visiting professor at the University of Basel in 2013/2014 and received an offer from the University of Innsbruck before taking up the chair in Modern History with a focus on the 19th and 20th centuries at the Historical Seminar of Heidelberg University in the winter semester of 2014/15. Since the winter semester of 2017/18, he has served as a professor of modern and contemporary history at Ludwig Maximilians University Munich, focusing on colonial and global history, specifically the sociocultural transformation of colonial agrarian economies, the emergence and significance of global infrastructures, and the theory and method of global history.

Research Interests