In my research I focus on the history of Europe from the sixteenth to the early nineteenth centuries. The religious, social, and political face of Europe changed dramatically during these centuries, making this a very dynamic period in history. The Protestant and Catholic Reformations, colonization, and the Enlightenment were movements originating in Europe that shape the world until this day–for better or for worse.
My scholarship is concerned with early modern and eighteenth-century Irish, British, and German history. I focus on questions of perception and messaging through print culture in early modern Europe, the formation of individual and group identities, and methodological questions relating to discourse, life writing, and confessionalization.
My first monograph on the process of dual confessionalization in Ireland in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (2000) analyzes how confessional conflict and coexistence played out in a politically diverse and multi-ethnic environment. It examines why England’s attempt to introduce the Protestant Reformation in Ireland ended in warfare, colonization projects, and fierce resistance.
My second monograph on the cultural history of German spas in the long eighteenth century (published in 2021, copyright 2022, paperback 2023) shifts the focus from the medical use of spas to their cultural and social functions. This study shows that eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century German spas served a vital role as spaces where new ways of perceiving the natural environment and conceptualizing society were disseminated. Spas thus laid the groundwork for modern tourist experiences and multiplied and popularized Enlightenment ideals of social equality.
In a series of articles, I have examined three competing interpretations of healing waters in the German lands between 1500 and 1750: a Catholic interpretation that associated healing waters with holy wells at pilgrimage sites dedicated to saints; a Lutheran interpretation that, while rejecting the rival Catholic interpretation, described healing waters as gifts from God that could perform miracle cures; and a medical interpretation that relied on ancient Galenic medicine.
I have co-authored (with Stefan Ehrenpreis) an introduction to the historiography of the Reformation for advanced students (in German).
I have also edited a textbook entitled A Sourcebook of Early Modern History: Life, Death, and Everything in Between (2019).
I am currently working on the following projects:
Digital Humanities Project
Samuel Pepys’s Worlds: social network analysis (in progress), map with itinerary, 3D-reconstruction
Monographs
“A very rising man”: Samuel Pepys’s Diary in Seventeenth-Century London
Three Men and a Holy Well: The History of a Bavarian Pilgrimage Site
Conflict and Coexistence in Early Modern Ireland, 1534-1641 (revision of Die doppelte Konfessionalisierung in Irland)
Collected Essays
Finding a Cure: Holy Wells and Healing Waters in Early Modern Germany
Moments of Reckoning: Print and Propaganda in Early Modern Ireland