After studying in Marburg, Hamburg, Kassel, and London, Jürgen Osterhammel received his doctoral degree in Kassel and, following a stint at the German Historical Institute in London, received his habilitation in Freiburg. Osterhammel has held professorships at the universities of Hagen and Geneva, and, since 1999, has been the chair of Modern and Contemporary History in Konstanz.

His pioneering works have linked social, political, and structural history with the history of ideas, science, and culture, perhaps most exemplary in his book Die Verwandlung der Welt: Eine Geschichte des 19. Jahrhunderts (The Transformation of the World: A History of the 19th Century), published in 2010 and 2011, which earned Osterhammel the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize.