Kerstin Maria Pahl

Kerstin Maria Pahl is a Post-Doctoral Researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin's Center for the History of Emotions and served as a Visiting Professor (50%) at Humboldt University Berlin from June 2023 to March 2024. She is an active member of ALLEA (All European Academies) and Die Junge Akademie at Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Science and Humanities. Her academic journey includes a binational PhD between Humboldt University Berlin and King's College London, reflecting her transatlantic scholarly focus.

Dr. Pahl's educational background includes a PhD in Art and Visual History (2018), an MA in Art History from Freie Universität Berlin (2011), and a BA in China Studies (2017-2020). Her international academic training also encompasses studies in art history, classical archaeology, and German literature across Frankfurt, Berlin, and Cambridge.

Her research centers on historical intersections between self and society, particularly examining intellectual and emotional practices of everyday meaning-making from the early modern period to the nineteenth century. Pahl specializes in the European Enlightenment's political and intellectual culture, working primarily with ego-documents such as autobiographies, diaries, and letters to understand historical conceptions of personhood and feeling. Her current project, Sensibility in an Age of Violence, investigates moral value change through individual agency in transatlantic Britain between 1780 and 1840, with case studies including Black abolitionist writing and missionary correspondences in Guangzhou.

Analysis of her recent publications reveals a consistent focus on the history of emotions across different historical contexts, with particular attention to visual culture, moral frameworks, and transnational connections. Her work demonstrates increasing engagement with interdisciplinary approaches that connect emotional history with political institutions, visual representation, and cross-cultural encounters, reflecting the evolving methodological sophistication of the field.

• Fulbright scholarship for Harvard University research
• Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies Visiting Scholar (2023)
• Sign UP! for Leadership Careerbuilding Programme for Female Postdocs
• BOOST! Programme by Max Planck Society (2019)
• PhD grant from German Academic Scholarship Foundation (2014-2017)

Dr. Pahl actively participates in multiple collaborative research projects including Feeling Political, Changing the Feeling Rules, and Immoral Sentiments. She has secured competitive funding from prestigious institutions including the Fulbright Program, Harvard University, and the Max Planck Society. Her international scholarly network spans institutions in Germany, the United States, UK, China, and Canada, reflecting her transnational research focus. Pahl is also engaged in public scholarship through interviews with major media outlets including Deutschlandfunk Kultur and the Atlantic.