Born in Munich, Goebel studied History at Freie Universität Berlin and University College London, where he received his Ph.D. in 2006.
[2] After four years as "Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter", Freie Universität Berlin appointed him as a professor in June 2015.
[3] In 2018 he became the holder of the Pierre du Bois Chair Europe and the World at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva.
[6] Goebel's main research interests are the histories of nationalism, of migration, and of cities.
[9] Even though the book champions the benefits of “global history,” Goebel elsewhere warned that an “over-endearment with phenomena and historical explanations that cross national, and now regional, boundaries (…) can lead to unconvincing historical accounts, or narratives that drown questions of causality in a never-ending assemblage of sparkly anecdotes about ‘entanglement.’” [10]