Philipp Ther (Vienna)

Historicum Room K201, Schellingstr. 12, Munich

Colloquium “Europe's History of the Present: Universalism and Particularism”

The KFG colloquium starts with its first session in the winter term on Wednesday, Nov 5, 2025, with a lecture by Senior Fellow
Philipp Ther on "Collective Privatization and Individual Entrepreneurship. Impressions about Chinese Capitalism Based on a Case Study in Shipbuilding".

In cooperation with the colloquia of the Chair of Modern History and the Chair of East and Southeast European History

Philipp Ther is professor of Central European history at the University of Vienna, where he founded the Research Center for the History of Transformations (RECET). Two of his monographs deal with the recent economic and social history of Europe, Europe since 1989: A History (Princeton UP, 2016) and How the West Lost the Peace: The Great Transformation since 1989 (Polity Press, 2023). In these books, he developed the concept cotransformation for assessing the impact of neoliberal reforms in post-communist Europe on the West and, in particular, on Germany. One of his books is a multigraph on the transformation of shipyards in late state socialism and the EU (with Ulf Brunnbauer et al., In den Stürmen der Transformation: Zwei Werften zwischen Sozialismus und EU, Suhrkamp, 2022). He has also worked on the history of music institutions and markets in Central Europe since the late eighteenth century. He recently published the book "Der Klang der Monarchie. Eine musikalische Geschichte des Habsburgerreichs", which has been nominated for the "Wissenschaftsbuch des Jahres" 2026 award.

If you want to regularly receive information on the colloquium and other KFG events, please register for the newsletter by writing to kfg20@lrz.uni-muenchen.de.

We also want to draw your attention to the mailing list “Osteuropaforschung München”, which we operate jointly with the Collegium Carolinum and the Graduate School. This mailing list will keep you informed about selected events on Eastern Europe in Munich, including public lectures, study days, and other activities of interest. On average, you will receive two to three invitations per semester. Subscribe to this newsletter here.