Ulrike Schaper

Ulrike Schaper is an Associate Professor (Juniorprofessorin) of Modern History at the Free University of Berlin's Friedrich Meinecke Institute within the Department of History and Cultural Studies. She joined the faculty in 2013 and was reappointed in October 2016 following a positive evaluation of her performance. Prior to this position, she conducted research and taught at the Collaborative Research Centre Governance in Areas of Limited Statehood, the Department of Law, and the Department of Theater Studies at Freie Universität Berlin. In 2014, she was a Visiting Scholar at Cambridge University.

Her research focuses on the global history of late nineteenth and twentieth century Germany, with particular emphasis on colonial history, gender history, and the history of sexuality. She has extensively worked on German colonial history, colonial knowledge, and colonial law, receiving her PhD in 2010 with a study on the colonial legal order in the German colony of Cameroon. Her current research examines West German sex tourism between approximately 1965 and 1995 to investigate intersections of globalization, sexual liberalization, and commodification in West Germany's relationship with the "Third World." This project connects her interests in gender history, the history of sexuality, colonial othering, and processes of exotization within post-World War II history.

Professor Schaper's scholarly output demonstrates consistent engagement with themes of colonialism, gender, and legal history. Her publications reveal a trajectory from foundational work on German colonial legal structures in Cameroon to increasingly sophisticated analyses of postcolonial legacies, sexual politics, and global power dynamics. Recent works show her expanding focus to include contemporary issues of monument politics, public space decolonization, and the ongoing impacts of colonial history in modern European identity formation. Her interdisciplinary approach bridges historical methodology with insights from gender studies, postcolonial theory, and cultural anthropology.

She has been involved in significant research projects including "The Laws of Social Cohesion" funded by the Berlin University Alliance, and "Toppling Statues: Public Spaces, Colonial Heritage, and Identities in Europe" with UNA Europa Seed Funding. Her collaborative work "The Archaeology of German Colonial heritages in Ghana" has been completed. She has organized numerous conferences and workshops on topics ranging from intimacy and mobility to German and Italian colonialism, demonstrating her leadership in the field.

Professor Schaper actively supervises graduate students and teaches courses on theory, method, and history of history, as well as Global History MA Colloquia. Her teaching for the Winter Semester 2024/25 includes seminars and colloquia focusing on foundational historical methodology and advanced global history topics. She continues to be an active contributor to academic discourse through her publications, conference presentations, and collaborative research initiatives that bridge historical scholarship with contemporary social issues.