Research Cooperation – Westphalia

The IStG conducts research on urban areas in Germany and Central Europe, examining their historical, social, and cultural dimensions. Westphalia serves as a central point of reference, enabling the institute to situate regional developments within cross-regional and European contexts and to analyse them in a comparative approach.

Therefore, the IStG maintains close institutional and academic collaboration with institutions of the Landschaftsverband Westfalen-Lippe (LWL) and the Department for the Regional History of Westphalia at Münster University. This long-standing cooperation is reflected in numerous research projects, publications, and digital resources.

Joint projects are, among others, the Historischer Atlas westfälischer Städte (Historical Atlas of Westphalian Towns), the Historisches Handbuch der jüdischen Gemeinschaften in Westfalen und Lippe (Historical Handbook of Jewish Communities in Westphalia and Lippe), the Handbuch der deutschen Kunstdenkmäler Nordrhein-Westfalen II: Westfalen (Handbook of German Art Monuments North Rhine-Westphalia II: Westphalia) as well as Westfalia picta. Erfassung westfälischer Ortsansichten vor 1900 (Westfalia picta. Collection of Westphalian Views before 1900). In recent years, this range has been expanded to include digital research resources and editions, including Reformation in Westfalen (Reformation in Westphalia) and Privatbriefe aus dem Dreißigjährigen Krieg – Fokus Westfalen (Private Letters from the Thirty Years' War – Focus Westphalia).

These projects highlight Westphalia’s importance as a research area, stressing the entanglement between research in regional history and overarching questions in urban history and Landesgeschichte (state history).