Imperial nature: Botanical illustration between Northern Europe and the New World. (Project management: Dr. Jaya Remond, Berlin) Photo: Maria Sybilla Merian, Dwarf banana with insects, engraving, hand-coloured, Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium Ofte Verandering Der Surinaamsche Insecten, 1705, plate XXIII (Courtesy of Universitätsbibliothek Johann Christian Senckenberg/ Frankfurt am Main)

Appropriations of the world? Colonialism, technical development and archaeological exploration: French, British and German in the disintegrating Ottoman Empire (1798-1932) (Project management: Dr. Eike-Christian Heine, Stuttgart / TU Braunschweig) Photo: Staging of the takeover: The frontispiece of Austen Henry Layard's report on the excavations in Nineveh shows the technically demanding removal of large sculptures (image rights: Austen Henry Layard: Nineveh and its Remains, Bd. 1, London 1849)

Fritz Bauer: Lectures, interviews and talks. Radio reports by and with Fritz Bauer between 1955 and 1968 (Project management: Prof. Dr. Werner Konitzer, Fritz Bauer Institute - Studies and documentation center on the history and impact of the Holocaust, Frankfurt) Photo: Anonymous postcard to Joachim Kügler, prosecutor in the Auschwitz trial in Frankfurt, without date; Postcard to the prosecutor's office Frankfurt, May 1964 (Photo: Fritz Bauer Institute, Frankfurt)

Holocaust Angst. The Federal Republic of Germany and American Holocaust Memory since the 1970s (Project management: Dr. Jacob S. Eder, Jena) Photo: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Permanent Exhibition, Middle Floor: „The ‚Final Solution‘ 1940-1945“ (image rights: Courtesy of U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum)

International peacebuilding and local success: Assumptions, myths, and reality (Project management: Prof. Dr. Sévérine Autesserre, Columbia University -New York-, Barnard College, Political Science) Photo: A United Nations Peacekeeper standing guard in North Kivu, Democratic Republic of Congo (Photo: Philippe Rosen, 2011)

The sacred space on the Agora of Selinunte. Studies from the beginnings of the Greek period and to the continuation of the Punic period Photo: Selinunte: View from the north-west over the north-eastern part of the Agora (A. Thomsen, image rights DAI)

Only decor? The abbasidic stucco work of Samarra. Comparative transregional, cross-material and cross-media analysis (Project management: Simone Struth, Bamberg) Photo: An excavator in front of a stucco wall with niches in the Balkuwara Palace. (Image rights: Museum of Islamic Art, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin - Prussian Cultural Heritage, Ernst Herzfeld, Samarra 1911-13)

The provincial museum Yazd. Safeguarding cultural heritage - fostering regional identities (Project management: Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. mult. Hermann Parzinger, Stiftung preußischer Kulturbesitz; Dr. Bernhard Spies, Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Bonn; Reinier Wolfs, Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Bonn) Photo: Yazd, Second house-garden of the Sadrololama complex, view from northeast (Photo: Susanne Annen)

The Eastern Slavs in the search for supraregional identities (from the end of the 15th to the middle of the 18th century) in the context of modern national formation. (Project management: Prof. Dr. Nikolaus Katzer, Max Weber Foundation - German Humanities Institutes abroad) German Historical Institute of Moscow) Photo: Radziwill Chronicle: Bulgarian troops devastated Thrace and Macedonia, 924 AD (left side); The Bulgarian Tsar Pëtr concludes peace with the Byzantine emperor Lakapin Roman, 927 AD (right side) (image rights: library of the Russian Academy of Sciences, main collection of manuscripts, cipher 34.5.30)

A history of horror: Jews and their monsters, 1500-1800 (Project management: Dr. Iris Idelson-Shein, Frankfurt/Main) Photo: A dragon fighting a lion. Excerpted from a Yiddish manuscript from the late sixteenth century (image rights: Bayrische Staatsbibliothek)