While participating in the conference “Rezensieren, Kommentieren, Bloggen” (http://rkb.hypotheses.org/) in February 2013 at the Siemens Stiftung in Munich we got the idea that it might be worth to start our own academic blog on the two entangled and prospering research fields of humanitarianism and human rights. After discussing the issue with colleagues of the Leibniz Institute of European History (IEG) in Mainz, we recently decided together to start this blog as an experiment without knowing exactly where it will lead us.

At present, many young international scholars, including several colleagues here at the IEG, conduct research on their own which extends or differentiates the debate on the sources and trajectories of humanitarian norms and human rights. By creating this blog we want to give them a forum to get closer in contact with each other, to articulate their ideas, to exchange information and knowledge, to present perspectives from different backgrounds, and to share the same interest on the history of humanitarianism and human rights. Therefore, we would like to invite all academics around the world to participate in creating this kind of online network following the good tradition of scholarly correspondence and collegial cooperation. Let’s see where it will lead us…

Fabian Klose                           Johannes Paulmann