Stefan Rinke


Stefan Rinke is a German historian and specialist in Latin American history. Since 2005 he has been Professor at the Institute of Latin American Studies and at the Friedrich-Meinecke-Institut at Freie Universität Berlin.

Biography

After graduating from the Gymnasium Julianum in Helmstedt in 1984, Stefan Rinke studied History and American Studies in Bamberg and Bowling Green from 1985 to 1990. He completed his studies in 1989 with a Master of Arts in Bowling Green and in 1990 with a diploma in history in Bamberg. The Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung supported him with a doctoral scholarship from 1991 to 1993. In 1995 he received his doctorate at the Catholic University of Eichstätt with a thesis on German-Latin American relations during the Weimar Republic from a transnational perspective. His advisor was :de:Hans-Joachim König|Hans-Joachim König. The work appeared in 1996 as the first volume in the series Historamericana, which was founded by König and Rinke.
From 1996 to 1998, the German Research Foundation granted him a postdoctoral fellowship. During this time he spent research periods in Santiago de Chile and Washington D.C., among other places. In September 1998 he was appointed Visiting Assistant Professor for the Comparative History of the Americas and Europe at Tufts University, where he taught until 1999.
In the same year, Stefan Rinke took up a position as Assistant Professor in Eichstätt. In 2003, he completed his ‘Habilitation’ with a study on North Americanization and socio-cultural change in Chile. In 2005, he was appointed Professor of Latin American History at Freie Universität Berlin. From 2007 to 2009 and from 2017 to 2019 he was chairman of the Institute of Latin American Studies.

Research focus

Stefan Rinke explores the history of Latin America primarily from a transregional and global historical perspective. His research focuses on cultural globalization and North Americanization, popular culture, revolutions, memory and historical consciousness, history of knowledge, trans-American relations, temporality and future. They cover the period from colonial times, the independence period, the 19th century, the 20th century to contemporary history.

International activities

Stefan Rinke has been Visiting Professor and Research Fellow at leading international universities, including El Colegio de México and Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile.
From 2009 to 2018, he was spokesperson of the first German-Latin American Research Training Group, a cooperation with Mexican partners dedicated to interdisciplinary research on globalization in history and the present. In the Collaborative Research Center 700 "Governance in Spaces of Limited Statehood" he served as co-spokesperson from 2010 to 2017.
In 2014 he organized the European Congress of Historians of Latin America at Freie Universität and was president of the :de:Asociación de Historiadores Latinoamericanistas Europeos|Asociación de Historiadores Latinoamericanistas Europeos from 2014 to 2017.
Since 2019, Stefan Rinke has been the spokesperson of the International Research Training Group "Temporalities of Future in Latin America: Dynamics of Aspiration and Anticipation," a German-Mexican cooperation dedicated to researching temporalities of the future within the humanities and social sciences. In 2019, the German Foreign Office approved his oral history project on Colonia Dignidad in Chile.
Rinke has successfully nominated the historians Hilda Sabato, Irina Podgorny, Raanan Rein and Max Paul Friedman for Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Awards.
He has supervised numerous doctorates. Several of the doctoral theses have received awards. Rinke's students hold professorships in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Denmark, Colombia, Mexico, Peru and Switzerland. In addition, he has acted as supervisor to a successfully completed habilitation as well as to numerous projects by postdocs from Germany and abroad.
Rinke is a member of the advisory board of the German Historical Institute Washington D.C. and Berkeley, the Centro Maria Sibylla Merian de Estudios Avanzados in Guadalajara, Mexico, and the :de:Einstein Stiftung Berlin|Einstein Foundation Berlin. He is also a member of the editorial board of international scientific journals. He regularly reviews for academic publishers, journals and scientific organizations on three continents.

Awards and honors

In 2003, Stefan Rinke was awarded the Eichstätter Universitätsgesellschaft Prize for his habilitation thesis. For the period from 2013 to 2015 he received a Research Fellowship from the :de:Einstein Stiftung Berlin|Einstein Foundation Berlin. In 2017 he was awarded the Premio Alzate of the Mexican Academy of Sciences and the Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología for his complete works. In the following year the Universidad Nacional de San Martín in Buenos Aires awarded him an honorary doctorate. In 2019, the Dahlem Research School presented him with the Award for Excellent Doctoral Supervision. The Academia Mexicana de la Historia and the Ecuadorian Academia Nacional de Historia appointed Rinke a corresponding member.

Authored works