Staff

fuchs(at)leibniz-gei.de

Prof. Eckhardt Fuchs has been the director of the Leibniz Institute for Educational Media | Georg Eckert Institute (GEI) since October 2015. He joined the Institute in 2007 as research director and had been deputy director since June 2009. Prof. Fuchs is also the project head of International Textbook Cooperation at GEI. He studied from 1983 to 1988 at the University of Leipzig and completed his PhD in 1992. He has worked as a historian at numerous academic institutions, such as the Historical Commission in Berlin, the John F. Kennedy Institute at the Freie Universität of Berlin, the German Historical Institute in Washington and the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin. His research interests include globalisation processes in the education sector, especially those involving international organisations (global governance), education policy in Europe, the history of transnational education relationships, the global history of textbook revision and the history of teaching materials.

sammler(at)leibniz-gei.de

Steffen Sammler is EFREC’s project head. He obtained his PhD in modern history from Leipzig University and his habilitation in modern and contemporary history and history education from the TU Braunschweig. The focus of his work lies in the field of history education with a special focus on modern and contemporary European history. He joined the GEI in 2010 and initially worked on the ANR/DFG project Competition and Convergence: Images of Europe in German and French Textbooks from 1900 to the Present’, which examined the changes, variety, and ambivalence of images of Europe in French and German textbooks during the twentieth century. Since 2012 his research has focused mainly on the history and contemporary practices of textbook revision in Europe, as well as its implications for curriculum development and the teaching of history and civics.  He contributed to globalDAS: Global Citizenship at German Schools Abroad and was PI and co-author on the project researching the history of the Georg Eckert Institute.

czerwinska(at)leibniz-gei.de

Patrycja Czerwińska is a research fellow and has been working on the EFREC project since January 2021. From 2016 to 2020 she was a research assistant in the Knowledge in Transition department of the Georg Eckert Institute, working as part of the project team for the German-Polish History Textbook ‘Europe – Our History’. From July to December 2021 she was also responsible for coordinating public relations for the German-Polish history book project. Patrycja Czerwińska studied German language and literature at the University of Wrocław (Poland), German as a foreign language: Cultural Transmission at the Freie Universität Berlin and Intercultural Studies: Germany and Poland in Europe at Kiel University (CAU). She also works as a lecturer for German as a foreign language.

jez(at)leibniz-gei.de

Katarzyna Jez joined the Knowledge in Transition department at the Leibniz Institute for Educational Media (GEI) as a research fellow in January 2019. Since March 2022, she has been a part of the project team for the "European Forum for Reconciliation and Cooperation in History and Social Sciences Education". Katarzyna Jez studied German and Polish languages and literature, modern and contemporary history as well as European Studies in Poznań, Berlin and Frankfurt (Oder). While working at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities she was involved in a range of academic projects in the fields of linguistics and sociology. Before joining the GEI, she worked on the online project "Polenstudien.Interdisziplinär (Pol-Int)" in the Centre for Interdisciplinary Polish Studies (ZIP) at the European University Viadrana in Frankfurt (Oder).

franka.behrmann(at)gei.de

Franca Behrmann has worked as a research assistant on the EFREC project in the Knowledge Transfer department since 2023. She studied liberal arts with a focus on painting and photography at the Braunschweig University of Art (HBK). She is currently enrolled in a postgraduate course in photography under Natalie Czech.

wiatr(at)leibniz-gei.de

Since 2013 Marcin Wiatr has been a research fellow at the Leibniz Institute for Educational Media | Georg Eckert Institute, where he is responsible for the German side of the Joint German-Polish Textbook Commission and the series of textbooks produced jointly by Germany and Poland titled Europa – Unsere Geschichte (Europe – Our History). Since 2021 he has also overseen the work of the Joint German-Czech Textbook Commission. In 2016 he completed his PhD dissertation on the Upper Silesian politician Wojciech Korfanty in literary and historical discourse and memory politics during the interwar and postwar periods. His research and teaching focuses on education policy processes and minority issues in eastern European border regions, literature in public discourse and as a factor of political negotiating strategies, transnational didactics, aspects of sporting history in European regions, and the role of intellectuals in the context of totalitarian systems.

sadowski(at)leibniz-gei.de

Dirk Sadowski has been a researcher at the GEI since 2010 and is associated with EFREC through his work as the research coordinator of the German-Israeli Textbook Commission. He studied modern and contemporary history, and Israeli and Jewish studies in Berlin and Jerusalem and worked for the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung in Israel for many years. From 2001 to 2009, he was a researcher at the Simon Dubnow Institute for Jewish history and culture and he gained his doctorate from the University of Leipzig in 2008. His research interests are in the fields of the Jewish enlightenment (Haskalah) and Jewish history of the early modern era as well as depictions of Jews and Judaism in current textbooks.