The Thematic Consolidation Group “Constructing Alternative Pasts: (New) Sources and Methods” (TCG:CAP), which is based at the German Historical Institute London/Max Weber Stiftung, will bring together some of the research questions and approaches of TM1 ‘History as a Political Category’, the more historically oriented research areas of TM7 ‘Media and the Constitution of the Political’, and the research of GHIL historians who focus on related subjects. These subjects include the study of groups which are historically under-documented in the official archive (such as the elderly and women, lower caste and marginal community groups), the politics of crowdsourced history on the internet and social media platforms in the age of ‘endangered’ archives, and the politics of history making. The Group will investigate how various constructions of the past in a range of media, for example photography, social media, and social science data, can provide us with an archive outside of official records and narratives to recover the politics of history making by different social and cultural groups. A particular focus will be on sources and its current source collection project “Selling Histories” will be completed in the final phase. “Selling Histories” was a sub-project of TM1 History as a Political Category Research Area Popular Histories, which assembled and digitized a repository of locally produced and circulated histories.
The Group will consolidate the findings of TM1 and TM7 from the main phase and explore the possibilities of continued research networks beyond 2027. Looking to the future, the TCG has drawn in early and mid-career scholars into its programme for 2024-27. It has extended its research collaborations to South India. It will also work more closely with the Max Weber Forum in Delhi and a research fellow of the Forum has joined the TCG has a member in the final phase.
