Collective biography is the product of a scientific method in the social sciences and history, that focuses on reconstructing the history of a collective. Even though this method of reconstruction draws on the concept of biography that relates predominantly to individuals, it is more strongly based on the embedding of the individual in the shared experiences of a collective. In doing so, it responds to the criticism often levelled at biographical research that claims it promotes a heroisation of the individual. The approach of reconstructing collective biographies has been pursued in England since the 1970s and was further developed in German-speaking countries in the 1980s. While prosopography, which is an established research method in ancient and medieval studies, focuses on the systematic reconstruction of a group of people defined by shared space or time or a shared function and compiles corresponding lists of people, the method of collective biography develops the concept of the collective on the basis of relevant common characteristics and attempts to work out comparative as well as interactive aspects of individual biographies of a group. Collective biographical research thus contextualises to a greater extent and requires a broader range and density of data than prosopography.