Kick-off meeting for the academic project ‘Westgermania in Transition’

Since 2019, the NIhK has been heavily involved in the development of a publication and research project entitled ‘Westgermania in Transition’, which aims to gain new insights into Roman-Germanic connections in the region between the North Sea, the Weser and the Rhine. The project was proposed by the Chairs of Prehistory and Early History at the Universities of Bochum and Göttingen, in cooperation with the NIhK, under the Academies’ Union’s funding programme, and was finally approved in 2025 for a duration of 18 years. On 17 June 2026, the official launch of the project – based at the Academies of the Federal States of Lower Saxony and North Rhine-Westphalia – was marked by a kick-off meeting at the German Mining Museum. Among those attending the event were the managing directors of the two academies in Göttingen and Düsseldorf, as well as numerous staff members from the participating institutions, such as the LWL Archaeology Department for Westphalia, the Ostfriesische Landschaft, the Leibniz Centre for Archaeology (LEIZA) and the history departments of the Universities of Bremen and Oldenburg. The majority of the researchers recruited for the project were also present and introduced themselves in person. The NIhK is home to the archaeobiology-focused module ‘Landscape and Environment’ and the module ‘Chronology, Chorology and Technology of Ceramic Finds’. In addition, the NIhK plays a key role in the work carried out within the module ‘Edition, Databases and Geoinformatics’. At the end of the event, all those present were invited to the next project meeting, which will take place at the NIhK in December 2026 and at which an initial interim review will be conducted.