Historical research is reflected in a broad spectrum of forms of research organization and implementation. In addition to the continuing importance of individual research, collaborative forms of work in networks and joint projects are playing an increasingly important role. Researchers at the Institute of History are involved in such contexts in a variety of ways, ranging from regional to national to international cooperation.

A large proportion of the numerous and diverse research projects can be found on the websites of the Institute's professorships. In addition, the Institute of History also has four thematic clusters, which bundle the research and interests of the professorships into profile-forming focal points with overarching perspectives. These focal points currently cover the following areas and subjects:

• Security and the public sphere
• mining history
• Culture of remembrance and public history
• Mediterranean studies

The research priorities mark the strategic development of research at the Institute of History, which combines the sustainable development of central research fields with constant innovation. Thus, the research focus areas bundle an important part, but by no means all, of the research work carried out at the Institute of History. The formation of research priorities is understood as a dynamic process that takes into account the process of constant renewal of research fields and research perspectives that is constitutive for historical science. The work in the research focus areas, but also the individual research at the Department of History, is regularly discussed at a research day organized by the Research Commission of the Department of History and evaluated with the help of external historians. In this way, the dynamics of the overarching research clusters at the Department of History are continuously secured and space is created for innovative research that sees itself as part of the international scientific community.

In addition to its own research focus areas, the Department of History is networked in many ways with the research focus areas in the Faculty of History, which can be accessed via this link.