Dr. Milan Weber

• Since January 2026: Research Assistant at the Chair of Modern and Contemporary History at the University of Siegen (Prof. Dr. Angela Schwarz)

   

• December 2025: Dirlmeier Foundation History Prize

   

• July 2025: Ph.D., University of Siegen

   

• 2021–2024: Research Associate at the DFG Collaborative Research Center 1472 " Transformations of the popular " at the University of Siegen, Subproject B05: Popular History in Digital Games: Between Mainstreaming and Diversification

   

• 2020–2021: Research intern and freelance employee at the Hadamar Memorial

   

• 2019–2020: Master’s degree in History, Goethe University Frankfurt am Main

   

• 2013–2018: Bachelor’s degree in History, Political Science, and Ethnology, Goethe University Frankfurt am Main

Monograph

• Images of the Past: The Staging and Popularization of History in Digital Games

  (scheduled for publication in mid-2026 by Böhlau)

   

Articles

• “Pray like a Viking!” Popularizing Norse Mythology and Religion in Video Games with Historical Settings: The Case of Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, in: Carolyne Larrington/Hans Rudolf Velten/Helen Young (eds.): Popularizing the Middle Ages in Modern Fantasy. Neomedievalism, Video Games, and Vikings, Cambridge 2026, pp. 143–162 (peer-reviewed)
• The Virtual Dance on the Volcano. Narratives of Progress and the Abyss of the Anthropocene in Digital Games with Historical Settings, in: Marko Pajević/Jaanus Sooväli (eds.): The Abyss in German and Baltic Culture (Amsterdam Contributions to Modern German Studies/Transdisciplinary Approaches to German Studies, Vol. 100), Leiden/Boston, MA 2025, pp. 260–295 (peer-reviewed)
• Yasuke, the Black Samurai: Historical Authenticity, Social Diversity, and the Public Reception of History in Digital Games, in: PAIDIA – Journal of Computer Game Studies, February 12, 2025
• New Perspectives on Old Pasts? Diversity in Popular Digital Games with Historical Settings, in: Arts 12(2): 69, 2023 (peer-reviewed) (with Angela Schwarz)

• Journeys Through Bohemia’s Forests (Through Time) – On the Representation of the Popular Middle Ages in the Digital Game *Kingdom Come: Deliverance*, in: *Diagonal*, Issue 43: Memory, 2022, pp. 189–214 (with Tom Pinsker)

   

Short Papers and Science Communication (Selection)

• A Thousand Pasts in One—Digital Games as Historical Sources, in: DigiTRiP: Digital Teaching & Research in Practice, Dec. 15, 2025
• Review of: Lukas Dauer, *Psychiatry and War: The Logistical and Psychiatric Impacts of World War I on the Haina State Hospital and Its Patients*, in: *Geschichtsblätter für Waldeck*, Vol. 113, 2025, pp. 275–278
• Knights, Castles, Court Ladies—Canonization Loops of the Popular Middle Ages in Digital Games, in: Blog of the Collaborative Research Center 1472: Transformations of the Popular, 2023 (with Tom Pinsker)
• History as a Resource – Historical Computer Games, in: Blog of the Collaborative Research Center 1472: Transformations of the Popular, 2023 (with Tom Pinsker)
• Q&A on Gaming. Interview with the Executive Department for Press, Communication, and Marketing at the University of Siegen for the university’s Instagram channel, August 23, 2023
• History in Digital Games. Interview with the University of Siegen’s campus radio station Radius 92.1, June 20, 2022
• Publications, radio segments, and films by Ernst Klee. Compiled on behalf of the Hadamar Memorial, in: Jörg Osterloh/Jan Erik Schulte/Sybille Steinbacher (eds.): “Euthanasia” Crimes in Occupied Europe. On the Scale of Nazi Mass Murder, Göttingen 2022, pp. 365–373

History of Therapeutic Care in the First Half of the 20th Century (ongoing)

The nature and scope of therapeutic care received by people with mental illness in the first half of the 20th century depended to a large extent on an individual’s social status and the respective level of cultural, social, and economic capital that patients were able to mobilize. The inequality in therapeutic care can be understood as an expression of the social distinction between middle-class groups and the rest of the population during times of fundamental historical transformation. The project examines these tensions through a systematic comparison of private clinics and public institutions.

Popularizing History in Digital Games (completed)

Digital games represent one of the most important channels for disseminating popular historical narratives in the context of an increasingly globalized culture of history and memory. The historical content disseminated by digital games influences a process of transformation in how the past is popularly presented, discussed in the mass media, and imbued with meaning from the perspective of the present. Digital games exert such a transformative effect on history and historical culture because they present history in a unique way—as a broadly accessible, suspenseful, and potentially boundless amalgam of images and narratives. The project examined the medium’s influence on our current understanding of history based on a corpus of nearly forty immensely popular digital games.

• Digital, Playful Remembrance. Participation in a panel discussion as part of the conference “Digital Horizons: The Transformation of Remembrance Culture” organized by the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Berlin, January 13, 2026
• Between Nation and Nationalism: Narratives of Remembrance Culture Regarding the 1944 Warsaw Uprising in Digital Games from Poland. Presentation as part of the conference “Slavic Game Studies II: ‘Seriously?’—Authentic Remembrance and Narrative in Games About and From Central and Eastern Europe,” organized by the Universities of Bochum and Münster, at the University of Münster, November 6, 2025
• Virtual Pasts: Digital Games as Sources for Historical Research. Lecture as part of the colloquium “Contemporary History and Public History” at the University of Cologne, June 25, 2024
• Historical Concepts of Followership in Digital Games. Lecture as part of the workshop “Staging Political Concepts of Order” organized by Collaborative Research Center 1472: Transformations of the Popular at the University of Siegen, April 18, 2024 (with Angela Schwarz and Tom Pinsker)
• It’s Getting Better and Better… Or Is It? Human Violence, Nature’s Resistance, and the Anthropocene in Digital Games with Historical Settings. Presentation as part of the interdisciplinary conference “There Is Room for Everyone in the Abyss of History—Talking About Abysses” organized by the Universities of Frankfurt am Main, Bamberg, and Tübingen at the Freies Deutsches Hochstift in Frankfurt am Main, November 25, 2023
• Popular Bodies in Interaction (Introduction and Moderation). Panel as part of the 33rd Annual Conference of the Society for Popular Music Research, “Rock Your Body: Bodies in Interaction with Popular Music,” at the University of Siegen, September 15, 2023 (with Tom Pinsker)
• Pray like a Viking! Norse Mythology and Religion in Assassin’s Creed Valhalla. Presentation as part of the workshop “Game of Thrones as a Game Changer for Big-Budget Fantasy?” organized by the Cooperative Research Group: Popularizing the Past at the University of Siegen, June 24, 2023
• “You Won’t Find This Story in the History Books”—Current Approaches to History in Digital Games Using Diversity as an Example. Lecture as part of the conference “History of the Present—Present of History” organized by the Chair of Contemporary History at the University of Siegen, November 18, 2022
• “The Very Dark Things” – Representations of National Socialism in Selected Historical Games. Presentation as part of the colloquium “History of Knowledge and Communication in Modernity / Modern and Contemporary History” at the University of Siegen, November 17, 2021
• The Perpetrators at the Nazi Killing Center in Hadamar, 1941–1947. Crimes and Criminal Justice Proceedings. Lecture as part of the colloquium “Recent Research on the History and Impact of the Holocaust” at Goethe University Frankfurt am Main, February 11, 2020