Welcome.

My name is Martin Klimke, and I am Vice Provost and Associate Professor of History at New York University Abu Dhabi, as well as Global Network Associate Professor of History, Faculty of Arts & Science, New York University.

I am also an associate at the Heidelberg Center for American Studies (HCA) at the University of Heidelberg.

My research focuses on the intersection of political and cultural history, with a particular emphasis on diplomatic and transnational history.

The increasingly global cultural, political, and military presence of the U.S., especially after World War II, as well as the country’s complex entanglement with other forces of globalization, are at the center of my scholarly interests.

A special focus of my research is transnational protest movements, processes of cultural transfer, and global networks of dissent, for example with respect to 1960/70s protest movements, the African American freedom struggle in the 20th century, or the grassroots activism of the 1980s.

Upcoming Conference:
"Global Legacies of Anti-Nuclear Activism: Intersectional Perspectives," University of California, Santa Barbara (April 11-13, 2024)

The Global Sixties:

An Interdisciplinary Journal (Taylor & Francis)

 

Editor-in-Chief:
Martin Klimke - New York University Abu Dhabi, UAE

Editors:
Malgorzata Fidelis - University of Illinois, Chicago, USA
Omar Gueye - Université Cheikh Anta Diop de Dakar, Senegal
Naoko Koda - Kindai University, Osaka, Japan
Aldo Marchesi - Universidad de la República, Montevideo, Uruguay
Judy Tzu-Chun Wu - University of California, Irvine, USA

Editor-at-large:
Jeremy Varon - The New School for Social Research, New York, USA

Aims & Scope:
The Global Sixties: An Interdisciplinary Journal is the only academic, peer-reviewed journal to focus solely on this transformative impact and legacies of this decade in our history. Originally launched in 2008 as The Sixties: A Journal of History, Politics, and Culture, it was renamed in 2022 to account for the broader and more globally inclusive trajectory of scholarship in this area.

Generally focusing on the concept of “the long Sixties” and welcoming approaches from all disciplines, the journal addresses how this period continues to be examined and redefined across the world, encouraging global, regional, and local perspectives, as well as transnational and comparative analyses.

For more information on the project, please visit the journal’s new website at www.globalsixtiesjournal.com.

NEW: The Global Sixties Colloquium
The Global Sixties Colloquium provides a platform for scholars to present their latest research, work-in-progress, projects, and publications related to the global sixties. This seminar series aims to encourage scholarly discussions and facilitate diverse perspectives about this pivotal period in history among scholars from across the world.

For more information, please see www.globalsixtiesjournal.com/colloquium.

Protest, Culture & Society

Publication Series, Berghahn Books (New York/Oxford, since 2008)

 

Editors:
Kathrin Fahlenbrach, Institute for Media and Communication, University of Hamburg, Germany
Martin Klimke, New York University Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
Joachim Scharloth, Waseda University, Japan

Aims & Scope:
Protest movements have been recognized as significant contributors to processes of political participation and transformations of culture and value systems, as well as to the development of both a national and transnational civil society. This series brings together the various innovative approaches to phenomena of social change, protest and dissent which have emerged in recent years from an interdisciplinary perspective.

It contextualizes social protest and cultures of dissent in larger political processes and socio-cultural transformations by examining the influence of historical trajectories and the response of various segments of social, political and legal institutions on a national and international level. In doing so, the series offers a more comprehensive and multi-dimensional view of historical and cultural change in the 20th and 21st centuries.

For more information, please visit the series’ website at Berghahn Books.

Research Project:

Family Business Histories

Credit: Bab Iddriss, Crossing in Beirut, July 1945 July (LOC)

 

Family Business Histories is a collaborative research project between NYU Abu Dhabi & Tharawat Family Business Forum. This research initiative is the first project mapping family business legacies in the MENASA region. It features a unique approach to understanding the multi-faceted impact of family-owned businesses in the regional economy, society and culture while preserving the history of individual entrepreneurs and collective business activities.

This understanding will not only offer significant insights into historical transformations of business cultures and socio-economic environments in the GCC as well as the MENASA region but also create an empirical repository in cooperation with NYUAD’s Archives & Special Collections.

For more information on the project, please visits its new website at www.familybusinesshistories.org

Fellowship Program:

Humanities Research Fellowships for the Study of the Arab World

 

A multi-year research fellowship program on the study of the Arab world at NYU Abu Dhabi

While open to scholars working in all areas of the Humanities, the program aims in particular to build a center of outstanding research capacity in the areas of the Humanities that are relevant for the study of the Arabic-speaking world, its rich intellectual, religious, and scientific history, its cultural and artistic heritage as expressed in traditional and new media, and its interaction with other cultures in the past and present.

Scholars of Arabic culture and history will find it enriching to work alongside fellows who conduct research in related and adjacent fields. Scholarship furthered by this program is closely connected to the research profile of NYUAD's faculty in the Arts and Humanities; its Liberal Arts curriculum, with concentrations in History, Literature, Philosophy, the Arab Crossroads, and Museum Studies; related departments and research centers at NYU New York; and NYUAD's outreach program in the UAE.

For more information on the program, please visit its website at www.hrf-arabworld.com

Recent Publications:

 
 
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Media & Cold War in 1980s. Between Star Wars and Glasnost

Edited by Henrik G. Bastiansen, Martin Klimke, and Rolf Werenskjold, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, Palgrave Studies in the History of the Media, 2019


In recent years, the major economic, political, and cultural changes in societies during the last two decades of the Cold War have come into greater focus for academics from a variety of disciplines. This volume examines the role of the media during the period from the Helsinki Conference in 1975 until the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989-91.

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1968. On the Edge of World Revolution

Edited by Philipp Gassert and Martin Klimke, 2nd Edition, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2018, Distributed for Black Rose Books


It was a year of seismic social and political change. With the wildfire of uprisings and revolutions that shook governments and halted economies in 1968, the world would never be the same again. Restless students, workers, women, and national liberation movements arose as a fierce global community with radically democratic instincts that challenged war, capitalism, colonialism, and patriarchy with unprecedented audacity.

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The Routledge Handbook of the Global Sixties

Edited by Chen Jian, Masha Kirasirova, Martin Klimke, Mary Nolan, Marilyn Young, Joanna Waley-Cohen, Abingdon: Routledge, 2018


As the fiftieth anniversary of 1968 approaches, this book reassesses the global causes, themes, forms, and legacies of that tumultuous period.

While existing scholarship continues to largely concentrate on the US and Western Europe, this volume focuses on Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe.

Ongoing:



Books:

  • with Katalin Cseh-Varga, Burcu Peksevgen, Rolf Werenskjold and Marko Zubak, eds., Creative Dissent: Alternative Cultures During Socialism (in progress)

 

Events:

 

Courses:

  • African American Freedom Struggle

  • Global Cold War

  • Global Sixties

  • History in the Headlines

  • US Foreign Relations Since 1898

  • US in the World