Development project: Public History Weekly. The International BlogJournal (PHW)
Project management / Partners: Prof. Marko Demantowsky (Founder and Managing Director), De Gruyter Oldenbourg Publishers (Media Partner)
Staff: Managing Director: Marko Demantowsky, Deputy Director: Arthur Chapman | Deputy Director: N.N. (as of 2022), CCO: Moritz Hoffmann | Deputy CCO: Barbara Pavlek Löbl (as of Feb 2022), Editorial Assistants: Kristina Langeder-Höll (as of Jan 2022) | Carina Siegl (as of Feb 2022), Student interns: N.N.
Executive Board: As of August 2020 26 persons
Contact PH FHNW: Dr. Jan Hodel
Funding institution: Co-operation project with contributions from all partners
Project period: Construction phase 2012-2013 (finished), beta phase 2013-2016 (finished), project phase (2016-2020)
In short: Over the past years, we have developed a format that enables a lively, almost real-time scientific exchange and renders effective and visible the rationality potentials of the didactics of history and civics education and not at least of Public History for a wider public and in a shape and form compatible with present-day mass-media formats. Beyond the scientific community mentioned above, the target audiences envisaged for this new journal are above all teachers, journalists, and interested members of the general public, that is to say, groups which thus far have had no access to the ongoing debates on the didactics of history and civics education and that were hardly within reach even for didacticians publishing in established journals.
Attaining this objective calls for an online medium, because nowadays those seeking information, not least also teachers, do so primarily online. A further requirement is an interactive but low-threshold application so as to involve those colleagues who are not digital natives in lively, non-verbal discourses. At the same time, the planned format strengthens the online presence of history and political education didacticians as well as promotes the necessary adjustment to the digital transformation of everyday life among our students, history teachers, and published opinion. Thus, this online format could lead to satisfying the desiderata for wider and more diversified participation in the current debates on didactics—since it greatly lowers the participation threshold. Nurturing these debates while also continually satisfying professional curiosity will involve harnessing an element of surprise and predictability. While recognised experts with proven research records should be expected to voice their opinions on a regular basis, the contents of their contributions should not be predictable. Accordingly, 30 professors from nearly all over the world will support the new venture as a team of regular contributors. These authors have been granted absolute freedom to what write what they like within our thematic scope. Every Thursday at 8 a.m. will see the publication of a new and hopefully easily readable and stimulating initial contribution. Comments are welcome on all published contributions—and should not exceed the length of the initial texts. The outcome will be a blog journal, an entirely new publication format within the landscape of history didactics journals. This format, we believe, may suitably complement existing journals in the field.
Development context at the department
- Demantowsky, Marko: Exploring the Open Access. Editorial. In: Public History Weekly 4 (2016) 27, DOI: dx.doi.org/10.1515/phw-2016-6882.
- A Bridge between Journal and Weblog. An Interview instead of an Editorial by Mareike König with Marko Demantowsky. In: Public History Weekly 3 (2015) 4, DOI: dx.doi.org/10.1515/phw-2015-3461.
- Demantowsky, Marko: Digital History & Yet another journal? Editorial 2013. In: Public History Weekly 1 (2013) 1, DOI: dx.doi.org/10.1515/phw-2013-599.
