Substitute Professor - Winter Semester 2024-25 Dr. Maria Framke
Maria Framke is a historian of modern South Asia with a special interest in the history of international organisations, imperial and nationalist politics, humanitarianism, and gender and ideologies in the 20th century. Maria received her PhD from Jacobs University Bremen in 2011. Her doctoral thesis was published in 2013 by the Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft Darmstadt as Delhi-Rome-Berlin: The Indian Perception of Fascism and National Socialism in India, 1922–1939. The book addresses the transfer of fascist ideas and concepts from Europe to South Asia, with a particular focus on the colonial context of the subcontinent.
It elucidates the transnational dynamics, local appropriations, and rejections of such a transfer of knowledge. In 2023, Maria successfully completed her habilitation at the University of Rostock, entitled “South Asian Humanitarian Relief under Colonial Rule: Imperial Loyalty, National Self-assertion and Anticolonial Emancipation in and beyond British India, 1914-1946”. Maria’s current research project, entitled “Hidden Histories: Women’s Role in Rural Development Programmes in India, c. 1920–1966” (University of Erfurt) examines the contributions of Indian women to rural reconstruction schemes in three key areas: health, education and sustainable livelihood.
Relevant Publications
- 2024: with Thomas Davies, Daniel Laqua et al: ‘Rethinking Transnational Activism through Regional Perspectives: Reflections, Literatures and Cases’, in: Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, published online 2024:1-27. doi:10.1017/S0080440123000294.
- 2023: ‘Manoeuvring across Academia in National Socialist Germany: The Life and Work of Devendra Nath Bannerjea’, in: NTM – Zeitschrift für Geschichte der Wissenschaften, Technik und Medizin, 31 (3), pp. 307–332.
- 2021: with Harald Fischer-Tiné (eds.): The Routledge Handbook of the History of Colonialism in South Asia, London: Routledge.
- 2021: ‘Nationalsozialismus, antikolonialer Widerstand und Exilerfahrungen: Deutsch-indische und deutsch-deutsche Begegnungen in Britisch-Indien der 1930er und 1940er Jahre’, in: Jörg Zedler (ed.): The Bombay Talkies Limited: Akteure – deutsche Einflüsse – kulturhistorischer Kontext, München: utzverlag, pp. 103–135.
- 2020: ‘The politics of gender and community: non-governmental relief in late colonial and early postcolonial India’, in: Esther Möller, Johannes Paulmann, and Katharina Stornig (eds): Gendering Humanitarianism: Politics, practice, and empowerment during the twentieth century, London: Palgrave MacMillan, pp. 143–166.
- 2017: ‘‘We must send a gift worthy of India and the Congress!’ War and political humanitarianism in late colonial South Asia’, in: Modern Asian Studies, 51 (6), pp. 1969–1998.
- 2016: ‘Political Humanitarianism in the 1930s: Indian Aid for Republican Spain’, in: European Review of History, 23 (1–2), pp. 63–81.
- 2016: ‘Shopping ideologies for independent India? Taraknath Das’s engagement with Italian Fascism and German National Socialism’, in: Itinerario, 40 (1), pp. 55–81.
- 2015: with Joel Glasmann (eds.): WerkstattGeschichte, 68, thematic issue ‘Humanitarismus’.
- 2014: with Hannelore Lötzke and Ingo Strauch (eds.): Indologie und Südasienstudien in Berlin: Geschichte und Positionsbestimmung, Berlin: trafo-Verlag.
- 2013: Delhi – Rom – Berlin: Die indische Wahrnehmung von Faschismus und Nationalsozialismus, 1922–1939, Darmstadt: WBG.