PD Dr. Florian Kühnel

Personal Details:
Research Interests:
• 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
Selected Publications:
• The Ambassador is Dead – Long Live the Ambassadress. Gender, Rank and Proxy Representation in Early Modern Diplomacy, in: The International History Review, 2021. Link
• (together with Christine Vogel) (Hgg.): Zwischen Domestik und Staatsdiener. Botschaftssekretäre in den frühneuzeitlichen Außenbeziehungen, Köln / Weimar / Wien 2021 (Externa 15). Link
• (together with Matthias Bähr) (Hgg.): Verschränkte Ungleichheit. Praktiken der Intersektionalität in der Frühen Neuzeit, Berlin 2018 (ZHF. Beihefte 56). Link
• Kranke Ehre? Adlige Selbsttötung im Übergang zur Moderne, München 2013. Link
Research projects:
Difference in Everyday Life. Diplomacy as a Collective Practice in Early Modern Istanbul
The project asks what role difference played in (primarily English) diplomacy in early modern Istanbul. On the one hand, it expands the circle of actors and understands diplomacy as a 'collective practice'. On the other hand, it focuses less on courtly ceremonies and more on everyday diplomatic life.
The Galley Penalty in the Holy Roman Empire. A European History
Throughout the whole early modern period, several territories of the Holy Roman Empire sentenced people to the galleys and afterwards transferred them to Mediterranean sea powers. This connected different authorities, legal systems and regions. Thus, the project analyses the galley penalty as a genuinely translocal practice that was as much a means of constructing Europe as a common space as were trade, science, art, war or diplomacy.