Professur für Osteuropäische Geschichte Prof. Dr. Tanja Penter
Contact Details
3rd floor, Room 305
Grabengasse 3-5
D-69117 Heidelberg
Telephone: +49 (0) 6221-54 2476
Email: tanja.penter@zegk.uni-heidelberg.de
Office hours:
Prof. Penter’s office hours are on Wednesdays from 11:00 to 12:30 during the lecture period.
Examination duties:
Prof. Dr Tanja Penter is authorised to set examinations for all degree programmes at the Department of History.
Research Focus
- History of Ukraine, Russia and the Soviet Union in the 19th and 20th centuries
- A comparison of dictatorships: Stalinism and Nazism
- Experiences of occupation, the Holocaust, civilian casualties, forced labour, collaboration
- Transitional justice, reparations, legal accountability for Nazi and war crimes
- Politics of history and conflicts over memory in Eastern Europe
- History of knowledge and science: Research on the Roma in the Russian Empire
- Social and national movements in the Russian Empire and during the 1917 Revolution
Curriculum Vitae
Since October 2013, Professor of Eastern European History at the University of Heidelberg
July 2016: Offer of a W3 professorship at Bielefeld University (declined)
May 2010–September 2013: Visiting Professor of 19th and 20th Century History with a special focus on Central and Eastern Europe at Helmut Schmidt University, Hamburg
Winter semester 2008/09: Acting Chair of Eastern European History at Humboldt University, Berlin
2008 Habilitation and appointment as Privatdozentin in Eastern European History at Ruhr University Bochum
2007–2010 Project Manager of the international research project on compensation for former Nazi forced labourers at the Chair of Contemporary History, Ruhr University Bochum
2005–2006 Acting Head of the Academic Council for Eastern and Central European History at Ruhr University Bochum
2004–2006 Lise Meitner Fellow of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia (postdoctoral project)
2004–2005 Pearl Resnick postdoctoral fellow at the Centre for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C. on the project: ‘Collaboration on Trial: Soviet Postwar Trials of Collaborators’
2001–2003 Research assistant at the Institute for Social Movements at Ruhr University Bochum, working on the research project ‘Forced Labour in Coal Mining’
1999 PhD from the University of Cologne on the topic ‘Odessa 1917: Revolution on the Periphery of the Russian Empire’
1996–1999 Research assistant at the Department of Eastern European History, University of Cologne
1995–1996 DAAD scholarship for doctoral students (Odessa, Kyiv and Moscow)
1992–1993, 1990–1991 Study visits to Odessa and Volgograd
1987–1995 Studied at the University of Cologne (Eastern European History, German Studies, Medieval and Modern History, Slavic Studies); Qualification: MA
1987 A-levels at Hohenlimburg Municipal Grammar School (Hagen)
1967 Born in Iserlohn
Positions and Memberships
- Speaker of DFG-GRK 2840 “Ambivalent Enmity”
- Speaker of the Department of History (2016/17 and 2024/25)
- Research Director of the Research Centre on Antigypsyism at the Department of History
- Equality Officer of the Faculty of Philosophy (2017–2022)
- Member of the German-Ukrainian Historical Commission (DUHK)
- Member of the Joint German-Russian Historical Commission
- Scientific Advisory Board of the DHI Moscow (2015–2024)
- Member of the Academic Advisory Board of the Institute for Contemporary History, Munich
- Member of the Academic Advisory Board of the IOS Regensburg
- Member of the Senate of the Heidelberg College of Jewish Studies (2015–2022)
- Board of Trustees of the North-East Institute (IKGN e.V.) Lüneburg
- Member of the Academic Advisory Board of the Historische Zeitschrift
- Academic Advisory Board of the project “Encyclopaedia of the Nazi Genocide against the Sinti and Roma in Europe”
- Association of Eastern European Historians (VOH)