Michael Gehler is an Austrian historian. He has been teaching at the German University of Hildesheim since 2006.
Academic career
Michael Gehler graduated from high school in Neustadt near Coburg/Germany, and studied history and German literature at the Leopold-Franzens-University Innsbruck/Austria. From 1992 to 1996 he was a Research Fellow of the Fund for the Promotion of Scientific Research Vienna. In 1999 Gehler habilitated at the University of Innsbruck and worked there until 2006 as an associate professor at the Institute for Contemporary History. In 2001/02 he was an Alexander von Humboldt fellow. Between 2004 and 2005 Gehler was also a visiting professor at the universities of Rostock, Salzburg and Leuven. Since 2006 he has been a professor and head of the Institute of History at the University of Hildesheim. Since 2008 Gehler has been a corresponding member of the Philosophical-Historical Class of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. The EU Commission awarded him a "Jean Monnet Chair" for European history, which was followed in 2011 and 2016 by the re-awarding of a Jean Monnet ad personam chair. In 2012, Gehler declined a call to the University of Innsbruck for a professorship in contemporary history. In 2013 he accepted a call to head the Institute for Modern and Contemporary History Research of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna while maintaining his professorship at the University of Hildesheim. In March 2017 Gehler terminated his duties with the INZ and concentrated on Hildesheim university.
Honors and awards
Michael Gehler received numerous awards and honors. So he got from Austrian and German institutions:
2012 the silver cross-bracteat of the city of Hildesheim for the commitment to initiate and conduct lectures on European policy education
2014 the price of the University Society Hildesheim e.V. for teachers as "award for special commitment and outstanding achievements in the design of an open educational landscape between university and public".
Scientific profile
Michael Gehler works on Austrian, German and European contemporary history. The main areas of research are national and regional history, with special attention to the South Tyrol issue, and international relations, with special attention to European integration. Gehler has a wide-ranging scientific network that goes far beyond that of colleagues in professors and includes both young researchers and living personalities of contemporary history. Gehler is considered a committed mediator of scientific content in public and teaching. Gehler's works have increasingly been published in English.
Populism, populists, and the crisis of political parties: A comparison of Italy, Austria, and Germany 1990-2015. Co-ed. by Günther Pallaver and Maurizio Cau. Bologna: Società Editrice il Mulino, 2018.
Short-term Empires in World History. Co-ed. by Robert Rollinger and Julian Degen. Wiesbaden, 2020.
