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You are here: FRIAS Scientific Staff Scientific Staff Archive Dr. Birgit Metzger

Dr. Birgit Metzger

Contemporary European History
Universität Freiburg
PostDoc with Alumnus Peter Itzen
FRIAS-USIAS Programme

CV

Birgit Metzger studied Cultural Studies at Saarland University (Saarbrücken) and at Université Laval (Québec) and majored in Contemporary History at Saarland University. She received her diploma in 2006 with a thesis on creative milieus in urban environments. In 2012 she completed her PhD at the University of Freiburg with a thesis on Waldsterben (forest dieback) as a key political issue in West-Germany in the 1980s. From 2012 to 2015 she was a lecturer for Contemporary European History at Saarland University. Her research focuses on environmental history, social movements, the history of risks, transnational history and popular cultures. She is particularly interested in the relations between science, culture and politics in the 20th century.

Selected Publications

  • „Erst stirbt der Wald, dann Du!“ Das Waldsterben als westdeutsches Politikum 1978-1986, Frankfurt/Main - New York 2015.
  • Ökologische Modernisierung. Zur Geschichte und Gegenwart eines Konzepts in Umweltpolitik und Sozialwissenschaften, Frankfurt/Main - New York 2014. (co-edited with Martin Bemmann and Roderich von Detten)
  • (together with Laurent Schmit): Shades of Green: Ökologische Modernisierung im deutsch-französischen Vergleich (1970-1990), - In: Martin Bemmann / Birgit Metzger / Roderich von Detten (eds.): Ökologische Modernisierung. Zur Geschichte und Gegenwart eines Konzepts in Umweltpolitik und Sozialwissenschaften, Frankfurt/Main - New York 2014, S. 257-285.
  • (together with Silke Mende): Ökopax: Die Umweltbewegung als Erfahrungsraum der Friedensbewegung, In: Christoph Becker-Schaum / Philipp Gassert et al. (eds.): „Entrüstet Euch!“ Nuklearkrise, NATO-Doppelbeschluss und Friedensbewegung, Paderborn 2012, S.118-168. 
  • Creative Milieus: Concepts and Failures.  In: Martina Heßler / Clemens Zimmermann (eds.): Creative Urban Milieus. Historical Perspectives on Culture, Economy, and the City, Frankfurt 2008, S. 379-408.

FRIAS-USIAS Project

With the recent multiplication of Western military interventions, accidents during operations have raised awareness for the military’s vulnerability by non-combat events. Our historical research project proposes to shed light on accidents in the military as a continuous yet variable problem. By looking at the military – in peacetime and wartime - as one of the most relevant social institutions of the 20th century we put the history of accidents into a wider perspective. This project will study a specific social sphere, in which all kinds of accidents take place: the military. 
Focusing on France and Germany in the crucial period from 1920 to 1970, we ask whether an entangled history provides a better explanatory framework for risk assessment than, for example, do the nation-state or an abstract vision.