As a first step that preceded the birth of this DAAD Project, and in the framework of the AGYA event “Strategies for German-Iraqi Collaboration in Historical Sciences”, Prof. Jenny Oesterle and Prof. Bashar Ibrahim visited the Iraqi consulate in Germany in January 2019. They met the consul Dr. Muhammad Mustafa Juma al-Mutafeky and introduced the project to him (which was a survey of research topics of historians in Iraq). They discussed potentials of collaboration between Iraqi and German Universities and the role the embassies/consulate could play to support the project and the administrative/bureaucratic challenges of conducting projects between Germany and Iraq. Dr. Mutafeky later joined our conference in Heidelberg in summer 2019.