Franca Reif
Current Project: Book Market in Negotiation - Communication and Motivation in the Book Trade in Leipzig 1550-1650
The project addresses the Leipzig book market in the period between 1550 and 1650. It looks into negotiation and communication processes and how they constituted this early modern book market. The study focuses on the actors and institutions involved in the book market, their agendas, how they negotiated the latter within the framework of changing regulations and norms as well as social structures.
Stefan Weiß
Current Project: Colonial Crisis and National-Imperial Identity. The „Sepoy Mutiny“ 1857 and National and Imperial Discourse in the United Kingdom.
Research Interests: British Imperial History, Political History, History of Ideas, Theory of History
Geographical Area: United Kingdom, India
This research project focuses on the so-called „Sepoy Mutiny“, a military crisis in British India in 1857, which has been perceived as a „national“ and an „imperial“ crisis. It had an invigorating effect on discourse about nation and empire and shaped the relationship between the Empire and „Nations within the Empire“ in many ways.
How did concepts of nation and empire and their relationship to each other develop bevor the outbreak of the „Mutiny“? What was the situation of other nations (for example the Scottish and Irish) within the British Empire? Were there elements of an emerging „Indian Nation“ or something comparable during the events of 1857? What was perceived as „national“ and „imperial“? Were there intersections in the semantics of these terms and how did this change due to the „Indian Mutiny“? Was this event perceived in the United Kingdom as the beginning of an „Indian Nationalism“ and a danger for the imperial future? What were the roles of former imperial crises in that context? In what kind of framework did processes of identification and alteration take place? These and other questions are at the centre of an analysis, which rests on a variety of different sources, including parliamentary debates, records of the east India corporation, novels, plays and paintings.
