Karin Priem is Professor Emerita at the Luxembourg Centre for Contemporary and Digital History. She is a former President of the German History of Education Research Association (2007–2011) and of the International Standing Conference for the History of Education (ISCHE) (2018–2022). Her work focuses on public history, history of education, visual and material history; the history of media and technology; the history of humanitarian organizations; and and the history of entrepreneurship and social-educational reform. She was a member of the advisory board of the Revue Suisse des Sciences de l’Éducation and the Jahrbuch für Historische Bildungsforschung (Klinkhardt). She is co-editor of the book series Studies in the History of Education and Culture | Studien zur Bildungs- und Kulturgeschichte (De Gruyter), Appearances: Studies in Visual Research (De Gruyter), and of Public History in European Perspectives (De Gruyter). Karin serves as a member of the international scientific board of Pedagogia Oggi (Società Italiana di Pedagogia). She is also a member of the international advisory board of Paedagogica Historica (Taylor & Francis) and corresponding international member of the DOMUS Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Histories of Education and Childhood at the University of Birmingham. In addition, Karin serves as an international advisor of the research project Public History of Education in Spain (1970-2020): Social Perceptions, Memories and Construction of Imaginaries about Teachers and their Practices (PID2020-113677GB-I00, funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033) at the University of the Balearic Islands.
She completed her dissertation on the social history of orphanages (1820-1918) at the University of Tübingen in 1990 and, in 1999, also her habilitation on the intellectual biography of the German philosopher Eduard Spranger. Karin Priem since her early career has won prestigious awards (Landesgraduiertenförderung Baden-Württemberg, Habilitations-Stipendium der Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft and Marbach-Vollstipendium der Deutschen Schillergesellschaft am Deutschen Literaturarchiv). She has curated exhibitions and was invited as tutor of many international doctoral and summer schools. For many years, she has served as PI of third-party funded projects at the University of Luxembourg.
Since 2020 Karin is coordinating an international team of researchers who is working on the ISCHE Education and Pandemics Digital Archive. In 2023 she became a member of an International Working Group on Public History of Education.
As a follow-up of her 2022 scholarship awarded by the Swiss Iron Library in 2022, she has also accepted a 2023 scholarship by the same institution. During her stay at the Iron Library, Karin continued her research on the rich photography collection of the Georg Fischer Corporate Archives.