Completed Projects
2024: Diplomatie als kollektive Praxis: Botschaftssekretäre und diplomatischer Alltag im frühneuzeitlichen Istanbul (Diplomacy as a collective practice: Embassy secretaries and everyday diplomatic life in early modern Istanbul, Dr. habil. Florian Kühnel, habilitation thesis)
According to the common view, diplomacy means negotiations between envoys, rulers, and ministers about war and peace. This study, however, shows that diplomacy in the early modern period was not an individual achievement of individual “great men”, but a “collective practice” involving various actors – male and female – and encompassing much more than negotiations alone. Drawing especially on the example of the English (and later British) embassy in early modern Istanbul, Kühnel focuses his attention in an actor-centred and praxeological perspective on this variety of actors as well as everyday diplomatic interactions. The result is an important contribution to the theory of diplomatic history as well as our understanding of the practices of intercultural diplomatic relations.
2022: ‘Vom Land der Anarchie’ in die ‘Sackgasse Europas’? Handlungsfelder und Interaktionsräume französischer Revolutionsemigranten in der Habsburgermonarchie (‘From the land of anarchy’ to the ‘dead end of Europe’? Fields of action and spaces of interaction of French revolutionary emigrants in the Habsburg Monarchy, Dr. Matthias Winkler, Dissertation, supervised by Prof. Dr. Xenia von Tippelskirch and Prof. Dr. Peter Burschel)
The work focuses on the interactions and mutual relationships between French revolutionary emigrants and the host society in the Habsburg Monarchy from 1789 until the second decade of the 19th century. The study examines contact zones and interdependencies on a political-administrative, social-cultural and religious-ecclesiastical level, which arose from the presence of emigrants in the country of exile. Starting from the communicative interfaces in the host society, it explores the scope for action of the French in exile. Taking into account the context of the changing perceptions of the host population it shows that emigration was a polyvalent factor in the social structure of the Habsburg Monarchy around 1800.
2020: Neue Zeit der neuen Welten. Forschungsexpeditionen in den Pazifik und Geschichtsdenken im Europa des 18. Jahrhunderts (New times of new worlds. Research expeditions to the Pacific and historical thought in eighteenth-century Europe, Prof. Dr. Sünne Juterczenka, habilitation thesis)
Using the approach of critical reception history, this study examines the media representations of a series of research expeditions sent to the Pacific during the Enlightenment. The focus is on British, French, and German interpretations of the early modern period as an age of ‘discoveries’. This epochal narrative binds together the increasing global entanglements of the eighteenth century.
2015–2019: Wahrheitsentscheidungen und Zwang zur Positionierung: Die kommunikative Herstellung von Entscheidungsbedarf in der frühen Reformation (Truth decisions and the pressure to position oneself: the communicative production of the need for decisions in the early Reformation, Prof. Dr. Matthias Pohlig, sub-project B04 at CRC 1150 ‘Cultures of Decision-Making’, University of Münster)
The early Reformation in the Holy Roman Empire was a field of experimentation in terms of decision-making culture: a new plurality of religious decision-making options was discussed, but it was also debated whether it was possible to decide at all. The Reformation is a good example of what happens when an established decision-making constellation collapses and a new one has not yet been established. (More)