MemberThomas Maissen

Professor Dr. Thomas Maissen became full professor of modern history at the University of Heidelberg in 2004. Thomas Maissen was the founder and first director (2007–2012) of the Heidelberg Graduate School for the Humanities and Social Sciences (HGGS). In 2008, he established a joint master program in history with the EHESS Paris and directed it until 2013. From 2008 onwards, he served on the steering committees of the Heidelberg Cluster of Excellence “Asia and Europe” and eventually as one of the Cluster’s three co-directors. Since 2013 Thomas Maissen has been on leave of absence and heads the German Historical Institute in Paris, where he has established a research focus on and in Africa.

Thomas Maissen received his doctorate in 1994 in Basel after studies in Basel, Rome, Naples and Paris. After a postdoc-position in Potsdam, he gained his habilitation in Zurich in 2002 with the award-winning study Die Geburt der Republic. Staatsverständnis und Repräsentation in der frühneuzeitlichen Eidgenossenschaft (Göttingen 2006). From 2002 to 2004, he held an assistant professorship in Lucerne.

Thomas Maissen’s major research topics are the history of political ideas and their visual representation, the history of historiography, religion and mentalities. Since 2006, he has been a member of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities. He was a fellow of EHESS Paris (2009), of IAS Princeton (2010), of the Basel Research College “Legitimacy and Religion” (2009–2011), of the Marsilius-Kolleg Heidelberg (2012/13) and, in 2019, a Honorary Visiting Fellow of Queen Mary University, London.

He has been a member of Heidelberg University’s Academic Advisory Council since 2020.