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Dr. Thomas Weller

Member of the academic staff, Department of History
Room: 01 216
Phone: +49 6131 39 30310
Fax: +49 6131 39 30154

E-Mail


Personal Details:

Born in 1969 in Leverkusen, Thomas Weller studied History, German and Spanish Language and Literature, and Educational Science at the universities of Cologne and Seville. He qualified as a secondary school teacher in 1999 and received a doctoral degree in History from the University of Münster in 2004.
From 2000 to 2008, he was a researcher at the Collaborative Research Centre 496 (SFB 496) "Symbolic Communication and Social Value Systems" at the University of Münster. Since June 2008, he has been a member of the academic staff at the Leibniz Institute of European History, Mainz.

Research interests:

Social and cultural history of the early modern town
Symbolic communication in the early modern period
Cultural difference and early modern foreign relations
Spanish history

Selected publications:

Theatrum Praecedentiae. Zeremonieller Rang und gesellschaftliche Ordnung in der frühneuzeitlichen Stadt: Leipzig 1500-1800 (Symbolische Kommunikation in der Vormoderne), Darmstadt 2006.
Christoph Dartmann / Günther Wassilowsky / Thomas Weller (Hg.), Technik und Symbolik vormoderner Wahlverfahren (HZ Beiheft 52), München 2010.
Merchants and Courtiers. Hanseatic Representatives at the Spanish Court in the Seventeenth Century, in: Paola Volpini (Hg.), Ambasciatori »minori« nella Spagna di età moderna. Uno sguardo europeo (Dimensioni e problemi della ricerca storica 1/2014), Rom 2015, S. 73-98.
Eine schwarze Legende? Zum Umgang mit religiöser Differenz im frühneuzeitlichen Spanien, in: Johannes Paulmann / Matthias Schnettger / Thomas Weller (Hg.), Unversöhnte Verschiedenheit. Verfahren zur Bewältigung religiös-konfessioneller Differenz in der europäischen Neuzeit (VIEG, Beiheft 108), Göttingen 2016, S. 41-63.
Humanitarianism Before Humanitarianism? Spanish Discourses on Slavery From the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Century, in: Fabian Klose / Mirjam Thulin (Hg.), Humanity. A History of European Concepts in Practice From the Sixteenth Century to the Present, Göttingen 2016 (VIEG, Beiheft 110), S. 151-168.

Forschungsprojekte:

Cultural Difference and Early Modern Foreign Relations. The Spanish Monarchy and the Hanseatic Cities (c. 1570–1700)

By focussing on two actors who can be considered as unequal in various regards this project examines the contemporary ways of coping with cultural difference in the field of sixteenth and seventeenth-century foreign relations.

Lives on the move. Mobile identities and belonging in the Iberian Atlantic (1580–1700)

This project explores the relationship between mobility and boundary making from an actor-centred perspective. It focuses on foreign merchants of different »national« origins who were based in Seville and participated in the Atlantic trade. In pursuing their activities these merchants frequently crossed spatial, political and juridical borders and boundaries drawn by Spanish authorities. This project analyses how these practices of transgression and border crossing affected the construction of identities and senses of belonging

The Antislavery Discourse between Early Modern Criticism and Abolitionism

The project examines the antislavery discourse in the period spanning the end of the ancien régime and the beginning of the modern period and focuses on the Spanish-speaking world.