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PD Dr. Florian Kühnel

Research associate, on leave to represent the Chair of Modern History at Tübingen University

Office: 05 305
+49 (0) 6131 39 26114
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Florian Kühnel studied historical anthropology in Freiburg (M.A. 2007) and then completed his doctoral degree in early modern history in Münster (2012) where he was a member of the graduate school of the cluster of excellence “Religion and Politics”. From 2011 to 2016 he was a research associate at the chair for Early Modern European History at the Humboldt-University Berlin. Afterwards, he led the DFG-project “Experts of Diplomacy. The English Embassy Secretaries in Early Modern Istanbul” at the chair for Medieval and Early Modern Cultural History in Göttingen. He held research fellowships in Gotha (Herzog-Ernst), London (German Historical Institute & Gerda Henkel) and Paris (German Historical Institute). Florian joined the Leibniz Institute for European History in March 2022. In January 2024 he completed his habilitation in early modern and modern history at the Humboldt-University Berlin.
During winter term 2025/26 and summer term 2026 Florian Kühnel represents the Chair of Modern History at Tübingen University.

• Historical anthropology
• Cultural history of diplomacy (esp. ‘non-ambassadorial diplomacy’, diplomacy and gender)
• Cultural encounters between Western Europe and the Ottoman Empire
• Honour, dishonour, infamy
• Historical intersectional analysis
• Forced mobility, transregional legal punishment

• Diplomatie als kollektive Praxis. Botschaftssekretäre und diplomatischer Alltag im frühneuzeitlichen Istanbul, Göttingen 2024 (Frühneuzeit-Forschungen 29), https://doi.org/10.46500/83535686
• The Ambassador is Dead – Long Live the Ambassadress. Gender, Rank and Proxy Representation in Early Modern Diplomacy, in: The International History Review 44 (5), 2021, https://doi.org/10.1080/07075332.2021.1905032
• (zus. mit Christine Vogel) (Hgg.): Zwischen Domestik und Staatsdiener. Botschaftssekretäre in den frühneuzeitlichen Außenbeziehungen, Köln / Weimar / Wien 2021 (Externa 15), https://doi.org/10.7788/9783412521165
• (zus. mit Matthias Bähr) (Hgg.): Verschränkte Ungleichheit. Praktiken der Intersektionalität in der Frühen Neuzeit, Berlin 2018 (ZHF. Beihefte 56), https://doi.org/10.3790/978-3-428-55483-6
• Kranke Ehre? Adlige Selbsttötung im Übergang zur Moderne, München 2013, https://doi.org/10.1524/9783486735901

Ongoing
Jan. 2025 - March 2028
Gesellschaft

The Galley Penalty in the Holy Roman Empire. A European History

The galley was the most important boat type in the Mediterranean world since antiquity, both for warfare and the transport of goods. But it was not until the 1500s that governments began to use convicted criminals as oarsmen. Remarkably, this trend also reached countries that had no galley fleets themselves such as the Holy Roman Empire.
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Completed
2022 - 2024
Gesellschaft

Difference in Everyday Life. Diplomacy as a Collective Practice in Early Modern Istanbul – completed

In order to overcome the binary opposition of European and Ottoman diplomacy, this project examined the meaning of difference within everyday diplomacy (mainly English) in early modern Istanbul.
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