Christian Methfessel is a postdoctoral researcher at the Leibniz Institute for Contemporary History. His PhD thesis dealt with the press coverage of colonial wars and imperialist interventions in England and Germany. In this context, he also explored depictions of cooperation among imperial powers and the representations of Europe that went along with them. In his Postdoc project, funded by the Fritz Thyssen Foundation from 2018 to 2021, he investigates annexations and secessions during the Cold War, arguing that African and Asian countries played a decisive role in upholding the territorial integrity norm and in shaping its ever-disputed interpretations. Furthermore, he recently started a project examining European reactions to the Yugoslav Wars of the early 1990s.

Publications (selected):

With Florian Wagner, Colonialism: Transimperial Cooperation and the European Idea (1880-1914), in: International Encyclopaedia of Ideas of Europe, 24 August 2020, http://www.ideasofeurope.org/encyclopaedia/interactions/colonialism.
Kontroverse Gewalt. Die imperiale Expansion in der englischen und deutschen Presse vor dem Ersten Weltkrieg (Peripherien. Beiträge zur Europäischen Geschichte; 3), Vienna 2019
With Iris Schröder, Antikommunismus und Internationalismus, in: Norbert Frei/Dominik Rigoll (eds.), Der Antikommunismus in seiner Epoche. Weltanschauung und Politik in Deutschland, Europa und den USA, Göttingen 2017, pp. 139-155.
Appeals for European Solidarity as Calls for Colonial Violence: British and German Public Debates around 1900, in: European Review of History / Revue Europeenne d’Histoire 24/6 (2017), pp. 918-931.
Spreading the European Model by Military Means? The Legitimization of Colonial Wars and Imperialist Interventions in Great Britain and Germany around 1900, in: Comparativ 22/6 (2012), pp. 42-60.