Yuetong Li

University of Cambridge, U.K.

Short vita

PhD candidate in History

Important scientific functions and memberships

Postgraduate Member, Royal Historical Society

Duration of the scholarship

April 13. 2026 to July 31. 2026

Research project

Title of the project:

From Enlightenment to Historik: Genealogies of Historical Knowledge in the German ‘Long Nineteenth Century’

This project extends that work backwards into the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries to trace the longer genealogy of “historical knowledge” in the German context. Its central question is how historical knowledge was defined, institutionalised, and communicated from Enlightenment historiography to nineteenth-century Historik and professional Geschichtswissenschaft. The project focuses in particular on the relationship between scientificity, interpretation, and the political and pedagogical functions of history. Methodologically, it combines conceptual history, the history of knowledge, and media history. Rather than treating historiographical theory in isolation, it examines how concepts of historical knowledge were embedded in institutions, teaching practices, and print culture. The research draws on source clusters in Halle, including the Nachlässe of historians such as Droysen and Leo, Enlightenment historiographical works, school archives, newspapers, and records of academic and civic associations. These materials make it possible to study how debates about method and historical truth were translated into classrooms, lectures, associations, and wider reading publics.

 

Publications in the field of Enlightenment research

Contributions to journals and anthologies

Li, Yuetong. “Between Body and Soul: Johann Christian August Heinroth and the Multi-disciplined Origins of Psychiatry at the turn of 18th and 19th Century.” In Anatomy of a Suffering Soul: Between Healing and Disciplining, ed. Daniela Tinkova. CEU Press, forthcoming 2026.