Michael North - Biography#

Michael North studied history and slavonic languages in Giessen, where he wrote his PhD-Thesis on the manorial economy in Ducal Prussia and Masowia (16th and 17th centuries). He became an assistant curator at the Museum of Hamburg History and later at the Art Gallery of the University of Kiel. Here he finished his Habilitation-Thesis on monetary and economic history in the baltic region (15th and 16th centuries). He taught at the Universities of Hamburg, Kiel, Bielefeld and Rostock.

Since 1995 Michael North has been Professor and Chair of Modern History at Ernst Moritz Arndt University Greifswald and Director of the Graduate Programme 619 „Contact Area Mare Balticum: Foreignness and Integration in the Baltic Region” (05/2000-12/2010) and Director of the International Research Training Group 1540 „Baltic Borderlands: Shifting Boundaries of Mind and Culture in the Borderlands of the Baltic Sea Region” (10/2009-03/2014). In these functions North has been contributing not only to the establishment of PhD-Programs but personally supervised numerous PhD-Studies that put the Baltic Sea Region back on the agenda of European research.

His main research interests are economic, social and cultural history of Western Europe and the Baltic Area. In this context he has been leading international research cooperations and book-projekts on topics such as European Art Markets, Artistic and Cultural Exchange in the Baltic Area and between Europe and Asia. He has been awarded prestigious fellowships at the Netherlandish Institute for Advanced Study (NIAS), the Flemish Academic Centre (VLAC) and the Getty Research Institute (GRI).