Rebekka Habermas

Rebekka Habermas (; 3 July 1959 – 21 December 2023) was a German historian and professor of modern history at the University of Göttingen. Habermas made substantial contributions to German social and cultural history of the 19th century. She held visiting positions at universities in Paris, Oxford, Montreal and New York City, among others.

Life and career Rebekka Habermas was born in Frankfurt am Main, the daughter of philosopher and sociologist Jürgen Habermas. She then received training in publishing and worked as an editor at S. Fischer Verlag.

Work Habermas' work focused on the history of the bourgeoisie, legal history, administration history, gender history, the history of criminality, and historical anthropology. Guest professor at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris (2002) Richard von Weizsäcker Fellow at St Antony's College of Oxford University (2010–2014) Visiting fellow at the University of Münster's excellence cluster "Religion und Politik" (2014) Fellow at the Lichtenberg-Kolleg, Göttingen's Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities & Social Sciences (2014–2015) Guest professor at the Université de Montréal (spring semester, 2016) Theodor Heuss Professor at The New School in New York (autumn term, 2016)

From 2010, Habermas served as spokesperson for the research training group Dynamiken von Raum und Geschlecht (Dynamics of Space and Gender), funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. In 2011, she received the Geisteswissenschaften International, a humanities prize awarded by the Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels to support translation of distinguished academic books.

Habermas served as editor of the journal Historische Anthropologie and co-editor of the series Campus Historische Studien. In addition, she was a member of numerous research groups, including Historische Anthropologie, Geschlechterdifferenz in europäischen Rechtskulturen. She was a board member of Göttingen's Zentrum für Theorie und Methodik der Kulturwissenschaften, and a contributor to the conception and planning of Wolfgang Benz's series Europäische Geschichte. She sat on other commissions and juries as well, including the European Research Council's scientific review panel for social sciences and humanities.

Publications