I am a historian of intercultural encounters in the early modern Mediterranean and beyond. I specialize in the study of contacts between Europe and Ottoman North Africa.
My dissertation project employs an actor-centered comparative perspective and focuses on envoys from Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli and their missions to Vienna, Paris, and London in the eighteenth century. My research examines North African envoys’ trans-Mediterranean careers, their integration into networks of diplomacy, intelligence, and business, and their diplomatic strategies and objectives. I also pay special attention to the companions of the main envoy and their diverse roles, trying to understand the internal dynamics between the envoy and his retinue that shaped the conduct of these diplomatic missions. Subscribing to a cultural approach to the history of diplomacy, I am highly interested in the quotidian dealings of the envoy and his men, their interactions with the European elite and non-elite population and culture, and their place as brokers of knowledge and ideas in a globalizing eighteenth-century world.
Publications:
I have now two book reviews available:
Die Marokkaner in Wien: Interkulturelle Diplomatie und städtische Öffentlichkeit im Zeitalter Josephs II., by Mark Häberlein. Austrian History Yearbook 57 (2026): see here
Osmanische Kriegsgefangene im Römisch-deutschen Reich im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert, by Manja Quakatz. Mitteilungen des Instituts für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung 133, no. 2 (2025): 505-7, see here
A volume chapter on the place of North African embassies in the relationship between Vienna, Constantinople, and North Africa is currently in preparation.