Carolin Kosuch

PD Dr. Carolin Kosuch is a Privatdozent representing the Chair of Modern and Contemporary History at Georg-August University of Göttingen since Winter Semester 2023/24, following the passing of Prof. Dr. Rebekka Habermas. She holds a habilitation from the Philosophy Faculty of Göttingen (July 2023) and serves as Associate Director of the International Society for Historians of Atheism, Secularism, and Humanism (ISHASH), while co-editing the journal Secular Studies. Her academic journey includes research positions at the Simon-Dubnow-Institute in Leipzig, the German Historical Institute in Rome, and TU Braunschweig.

Her research traverses European cultural history of the 19th-20th centuries with specialized focus on modern Jewish history, religious nonconformism, and secularism. Kosuch's scholarly output reveals a consistent trajectory examining how secular worldviews manifested in urban spaces, death practices, and intellectual networks across Europe. Her monograph Die Abschaffung des Todes: Säkularistische Ewigkeiten vom 18. bis ins 21. Jahrhundert (2024) represents a culmination of her longstanding interest in secular approaches to mortality, while her earlier work Missratene Söhne. Anarchismus und Sprachkritik im Fin de Siècle (2015) established her expertise in radical intellectual history.

Analysis of her 15 most recent publications shows remarkable thematic coherence across diverse publication venues, with consistent exploration of secular alternatives to religious frameworks in urban planning, death rituals, gender performance, and intellectual networks. Her scholarship frequently employs transnational and comparative methodologies, examining connections between German, Italian, and broader European contexts. Recent work demonstrates increasing engagement with material culture approaches to secularism while maintaining strong textual analysis foundations.

• Doctoral Scholarship, Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes (2010-2013)
• Fellow, KFG 'Religion and Urbanity: Reciprocal Formations', University of Erfurt (2023)
• Upcoming Fellowship, Institute for the History of German Jews, Hamburg (2025)

Kosuch has supervised over 30 bachelor's, master's, and doctoral theses on topics spanning Jewish history, secularism, urban history, and gender studies. Her teaching portfolio includes innovative courses on socialist kitchens, food history, nonreligion, and city utopias. She participates in significant collaborative projects including the Göttingen Colonial Exhibition and maintains active membership in the Working Group for Recent Italian History and German Historical Association. Her upcoming research continues to explore intersections of urban spaces, secular practices, and Jewish intellectual history, with particular attention to death rituals and material culture approaches to nonreligion.