Diana Lange Takes Up Professorship in Berlin

3 April 2025

Photo: Diana Lange

Diana Lange is moving from the University of Hamburg to the Humboldt University of Berlin, where she will take up the professorship for the History and Cultures of Central Asia. At the CSMC, she has been leading a research project on the mapping of Tibet.

With the start of the professorship at the HU, Diana Lange closes a circle: she completed her doctorate there in 2008 with a thesis entitled Die Verkleinerung der Yakhautboote. Fischerkulturen in Zentral- und Südtibet im sozioökonomischen Wandel des modernen China (‘The downsizing of yak hide boats. Fishing cultures in central and southern Tibet in the context of the socio-economic changes of modern China’). After further research stays in Leipzig, Zurich, and Paris and the completion of her habilitation thesis, Journey of Discovery: An Atlas of the Himalayas by a 19th Century Tibetan Lama, she moved to Hamburg in October 2018. As a research associate at the Museum am Rothenbaum (MARKK), she worked on the joint project ‘Kolorierte Landkarten’ (‘Coloured Maps’), in which the University of Hamburg and Stiftung Hanseatisches Wirtschaftsarchiv were also involved. She played a major role in the resulting exhibition ‘Farbe trifft Landkarte’ (‘Colour Meets Map’), which the MARKK showed from August 2021 to May 2022. 

At the CSMC, she has been leading a research project at the CSMC on ‘Maps as Knowledge Resources and Mapmaking as Process: The Case of the Mapping of Tibet’ (RFI 07). During this time, has also been deputy professor for Central Asian Studies at the HU Berlin. Diana Lange returns to the HU at the beginning of this summer semester and takes up the professorship for the History and Cultures of Central Asia at the Institute for Asian and African Studies. Her research project at the CSMC will continue until the end of the year.