The Department of Historical Studies is delighted that Associate Professor Robyn Radway has won the 2025 Center for Austrian Studies Book Prize for her monograph Portraits of Empires: Habsburg Albums from the German House in Ottoman Constantinople. The book was chosen for this prize due to its "its originality, analytical depth, and the sheer beauty of its production".
Portraits of Empires offers a complete account of an early form of social media: an incredible collection of albums filled with images, messages, decorated papers, and more from the Habsburg ambassador's residence, known as the German House, in Constantinople. In particular, the book looks at the day to day encounters in the late sixteenth century, departing from many histories of the period that provide a top-down history of European-Ottoman relations.