PD DR. SILKE HACKENESCH

Biography

Silke Hackenesch is an Akademische Rätin in the Department of North American History at the University of Cologne. Her research spans American cultural history, critical race studies, commodity history, childhood studies, critical adoption studies, African American history, and Black diaspora studies.

Her scholarship follows the connections between intimate lives and wider political structures. Across her work on adoption and on chocolate as a racialized commodity, she examines how ideas about race, citizenship, family, and belonging are made and contested across the Atlantic.

Contributions to BGHRA

Hackenesch’s friendship and collaboration with BGHRA founder and president Dr. Rosemarie Peña have roots in a generous act of support: in 2009, she made her Berlin home available to Peña, enabling her to extend her study abroad experience. When they later met at a German Studies Association conference, they became close friends. Peña invited Hackenesch to join her scholarly activism on behalf of Black German adoptees, and she has remained by her side as an advocate and historical advisor ever since.

Hackenesch has initiated and helped bring to fruition many of the conferences and publications to which Peña has contributed. Their enduring collaboration connects historical scholarship with adoptee perspectives and lived experience. She continues to work alongside Peña in advocating for adoptees’ recognition and redress and for ethical practices in historical research.

As BGHRA’s Executive Director of International Relations, Hackenesch strengthens scholarly, institutional, and community connections in Germany and Europe. Her work on Black German adoption contributes to the association’s conversations about historical records, family separation, citizenship, and transatlantic belonging.

Her collaborations include BGHRA’s international conferences and conversations connecting adoption scholarship with adoptee perspectives. Explore BGHRA’s postwar adoption history resources.

Projects & Areas of Practice

• A Child from Abroad: The Adoption of Black German Children to Postwar America (NYU Press, forthcoming June 2027). Her upcoming book explores the adoption of Black German children by African American families after World War II and its connections to race, citizenship, family, and belonging. Book details at NYU Press.
• Bridging Black Freedom Struggles. German and U.S. perspectives on Black freedom movements. Research network.

Selected Publications & Digital Scholarship

• Adoption across Race and Nation: US Histories and Legacies, editor (Ohio State University Press, 2022). The volume includes her chapter on Pearl S. Buck and the adoption of Afro-German children.
• Chocolate and Blackness: A Cultural History (Campus, 2017). Publication list and publisher link.
• “A Black Woman’s Activism in Postwar (West) Germany.” Black Perspectives, African American Intellectual History Society, September 18, 2024.

Presentations, Interviews & Media

• Adoption and Re-Kinning. Moderator of a conversation with Rosemarie Peña and filmmaker Deann Borshay Liem, Deutsches Haus at NYU, November 6, 2025. Event announcement.
• Schokolade und Schwarzsein: Eine Kulturgeschichte. Interview on Anno PunktPunktPunkt, episode 63 (2020). Listen to the podcast.
• University of Cologne profile. Research, publications, and additional interviews.