Senior teaching and research assistant on the Middle Ages and the Renaissance

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  • Currently on academic leave as a senior teaching and research assistant. He is working on an SNSF research project on looting and stolen goods from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance.
    His current post-doctoral research project investigates looting and the stealing of goods during times of war, and examines the related economic profiles, legal norms and legitimisation in the Middle Ages and the start of the early modern period from economic, historical and cultural viewpoints. What are the putative reasons for looting? What norms and legitimisation for the looting and stealing of cultural items develop over time? What narratives find their way into the corresponding text and image sources? How are these passed on? The aim is to provide a cultural and military-historical account using social and economic historical methods to make a contribution towards the investigation of western European war economy. The geographical area under investigation is restricted to a core area of France, Burgundy, Lorraine and the Swiss-Swabian region of the High and Upper Rhine. The project also looks at additional case studies on the looting of Constantinople in 1204, and the conquest and destruction of Tenochtitlan by Spanish troops under Cortés in 1521. Some preliminary work on individual aspects of the project has already been published in articles. The objective of the project is to complete an extensive source-based monograph of approximately 500 pages.

    Academic career:
     Studied History and English in Zurich and York (GB)
     2003: doctorate in Zurich
     2000–2003 assistant and lecturer at the Department of History at the University of Zurich
     2002–2003: academic staff member at the Institute of Swiss Reformation Studies working on the editorial project "Die Akten der Badener Disputation 1526" (The Badener Disputation Files of 1526)
     2004: Fellow at the Center for Medieval Studies (UCMS), Research Institute for History and Culture (OGC), Utrecht University
     2003–2004: post-doctoral funding from the commission for the promotion of young academics at the University of Zurich
     2004– end of 2005: academic staff member at the University of Münster involved in the DFG project "Verrechtlichung der Internationalität" (Juridification of Internationality)
     2006– September 2007: academic staff member in special research area 496 "Symbolische Kommunikation und gesellschaftliche Wertesysteme vom Mittelalter bis zur Französischen Revolution" (Symbolic communication and social values systems from the Middle Ages to the French Revolution), in sub-project A9 "Visualität der Diplomatie im europäischen Spätmittelalter" (Visuality of Diplomacy in Late Medieval Europe)
     September 2007– end 2009: senior teaching and research assistant and lecturer at the Department of History at the University of Lucerne
     
    Various lecturing assignments at the Universities of Zurich, Utrecht and Münster
     Co-publisher and staff editor of the magazine Traverse: Zeitschrift für Geschichte / revue d’histoire.

    Areas of research: communications history, the history of diplomacy, the military and cultural history of the Middle Ages and the early modern period, social and economic history, the history of criminality, educational history, auxiliary sciences.

  • +41 (0)41 229 57 12
  • +41 (0)41 229 55 44, Room 3.A48
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