Ralph Jessen

Born in Schwerin in 1956, Ralph Jessen studied social sciences and history in Münster and Bielefeld. He received his doctorate in 1989 and completed his habilitation in 1998. After serving as a visiting professor at TU Berlin from 1999 to 2001 and working at the WZB Berlin Social Science Center, he was Professor of Modern History at the University of Cologne from 2002 to 2022. His research focused on German social and cultural history in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the history of policing, crime and social policy, the social history of the GDR, and the history of universities and contemporary history.