The 2022 Annual Report provides information on the Foundation’s current programmes and presents selected research projects taken up into the funding scheme or completed in 2022. The digital version of the Annual Report additionally offers image galleries, videos on events and research projects, and links that supplement the information provided in the printed report.
The Gerda Henkel Foundation was established in June 1976 by Lisa Maskell in memory of her mother Gerda Henkel as a foundation with legal capacity under civil law headquartered in Düsseldorf. The objective of the Foundation is to promote science, primarily by supporting specific projects in the field of the humanities at universities and research institutes that have a specialist scope and are limited in time. A special concern of the Foundation is the advancement of postgraduates. The Foundation brochure provides a brief overview of the Gerda Henkel Foundation’s funding activities.
With the interactive and multimedia science portal L.I.S.A., the Gerda Henkel Foundation offers an online platform for the exchange of ideas, collaboration, and networking in the historical humanities. The acronym L.I.S.A. derives from the portal’s main capabilities – to read, inform, write, and exchange, or in German: Lesen, Informieren, Schreiben and Austauschen. L.I.S.A. also evokes the name of the founder of the Gerda Henkel Foundation, Lisa Maskell, who in 1976 set up the Foundation in memory of her mother, Gerda Henkel.
The final publication provides information on the special programme "Islam, Nation State and Transnational Movements", which was established by the Gerda Henkel Foundation in 2008. Funding was provided to scholars who, within the framework of their research projects, examined the emergence of political movements in the Islamic world on a national and transnational level with a view to current developments. The aim of the programme was to bring together regionally and thematically focused insights in order to be able to analyse conflicts with regard to global influences and cultural exchange processes.
The final publication provides information on the Special Programme Central Asia, which the Gerda Henkel Foundation launched in 2004 to promote outstanding up-and-coming scholars. The programme supported academics addressing in the context of their research projects the region of Central Asia. The funding focussed on the following countries: Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tadzhikistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Tibet, Xinjiang, southern Siberia, northern Afghanistan and Azerbaijan. The programme’s goal was to stimulate and enable research projects in the fields of archaeology and art history.
In 2001 the Foundation established a programme to support up-and-coming historians in Russia, Ukraine, Moldavia and Belarus for a period of five years. The objective of the programme was to stimulate and enable research projects addressing the history of the scholars’ own respective country and on that basis topics of historical relationships and comparative topics as well as cataloguing historical archive material. The final publication provides information on the programme.
The advancing specialisation in all scientific fields requires the intensive and constant exchange of ideas among scholars of various disciplines as well as a close connection between academia and the public. The Gerda Henkel Foundation has been striving to render a contribution to this goal since 1981. The Gerda Henkel Lectures are designed to give foreign and German scholars an opportunity to present their latest research findings to other scientists as well as interested members of the public. Numerous lectures have been published in the context of this format and more recent lectures recorded.
An overview of all Gerda Henkel Lectures is available here:
We will be happy to send you a copy of the Foundation’s publications on request.
Please contact:
Melanie Zander
Central Administrative Office
zander@gerda-henkel-stiftung.de
