Prof. Dr. Susanne Lachenicht

Person
Priorities

Short Bio

Current Position

Since 2009 Professor and Chair of Early Modern History, Universität Bayreuth

Academic Education

2009 Habilitation in Early Modern and Modern History, Universität Hamburg

2002 PhD, Early Modern and Modern History, Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg

1996 Magister Artium in Medieval, Early Modern and Modern History/German Literatures and Languages, Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg

1995 Maîtrise d'Histoire in Modern History, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, France

Visiting Fellowships

2022 Visiting Professor, Université du Littoral Côte d’Opale, Boulogne-sur-Mer, France

2022 Visiting Professor, Université de Bretagne Sud, Lorient, France

2012 Visiting Professor, Université d’Angers, France

2010 Visiting Professor, Ecole des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) Paris, France

2009, 2017 Visiting Professor, Université Toulouse-Jean Jaurès, Toulouse, France

2007 Visiting Fellow, All Souls College, Oxford, UK

Academic Service

since 2021 Co-.editor of book series Anthem Intercultural Transfer Studies mit u.A. Thomas Adam (Arkansas) (London, New York, Melbourne, Delhi: Anthem Press)

since 2019 Co-editor of book series Forum historische Forschung – Frühe Neuzeit (Kohlhammer)

since 2018 Co-editor of Humanities (Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute)

since 2018 Member of the Advisory Board, Institut Convergences Migrations, Paris, France

since 2016 Member of the Advisory Board of the Revue d'histoire du protestantisme (Librairie Droz)

since 2014 Co-editor of book series Mediengeschichte (Nomos)

since 2013 Member of the Comité de rédaction of Diasporas. Circulations, Migrations, Histoire (Presses universitaires du Midi)

since 2010 Member of the Standing Editorial Board of Oxford Bibliographies: Atlantic History (Oxford University Press)

2009 Co-Founder and Member of the Steering Committee of the Summer Academy of Atlantic History (SAAH)

since 2007 Review-Editor, E-Journal sehepunkte, French and Atlantic Early Modern History

To find her University webpage, please click here.

Selected Publications

Hugenotten in Europa und Nordamerika. Migration und Integration in der Frühen Neuzeit (Frankfurt am Main, New York, Chicago 2010)
Religious Refugees in Europa, Asia and North America (Hamburg 2007)
Diaspora Identities. Exile, Nationalism and Cosmopolitanism in Past and Present (Frankfurt am Main, New York, Chicago 2009)
As ed. with Dagmar Freist, Connecting Worlds and People. Early Modern Diasporas (London: Routledge, 2016)
As ed. with Marianne Amar, Isabelle Lacoue-Labarthe, Mathilde Monge and Annelise Rodrigo) Négocier l’accueil / Negotiating asylum and accommodation, thematic issue of Diasporas. Migrations, circulations, histoire 35/2 (2020).

Project Description

My current book project focuses on knowledge transfer, the clash of knowledge systems (or epistemes) and the formation of new knowledge about the Americas in the so-called Atlantic World in the period between the sixteenth and the early nineteenth centuries. For this purpose, it analyses a specific medium: Natural Histories, that is Latin, Spanish, Portuguese, English, French, German, Dutch and Italian descriptions of the climate, landscape, flora, fauna and people of the Americas. How does this specific medium, a “mass medium” in this period, produce knowledge, transfers and transformations? Where does African and American Indian cultural production come into play, through which practices, which media? Where, in which passages is this cultural production of knowledge mentioned, how is it represented, narrated? And what do representations of knowledge and knowledge systems in the medium tell us about the cultural production of colonial discourse in its varied and multifaceted ways?

To the Cluster of Excellence fellowship program and its 2021/22 theme Medialities, I could thus bring an early modern European and Atlantic perspective that links questions of epistemologies, knowledge transfer and transformation to a specific medium – Natural Histories, which were not only highly popular in Europe in the early modern period but also brought about much of how we think about scientific European/Western knowledge today.