Research team
Expertise
I am a historian of the early modern period. I have specialized in political and social history: My first book combines New Kinship Studies and political history to understand monarchical rulership. My current project focuses on the making of invalids in the Habsburg monarchy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. I explore how the figure of the “invalid” was made and negotiated by different political actors and institutions and I situate the phenomenon in the conceptual transformations of work, the body, war and the state. I thus have expertise in the history of the body and gender, in kinship studies, and in the history of dis/ability, poverty and military labour.
Rules of support in eighteenth-century Europe.
Abstract
Every society makes decisions about people who are considered "worthy" or "unworthy" of support. This is not a modern phenomenon. We find it nearly everywhere in history. But the questions of who exactly has the power to make these decisions, how and based on which criteria people are classified, if the criteria are made explicit or not, and how the people in need of support react, are deeply historical. The project investigates the rules of support in eighteenth century Europe by asking what criteria are used, how they are negotiated and how they become self-evident. It focuses on three cases within the context of the Habsburg monarchy: military welfare, poor relief, and access to citizenship. The project thus brings together the research fields of disability history, poverty research and the history of migration to approach the phenomenon from a broader perspective. It intends to develop new perspectives on early modern concepts and practices of un/worthiness, utility and belonging that shaped notions of the state and its subjects.Researcher(s)
- Promoter: Heinemann Julia
- Fellow: Heinemann Julia
Research team(s)
Project type(s)
- Research Project