RESEARCH GROUP

The project (ERC CoG 101043451) aims to explore what early modern small states at the borderland between the Ottoman Empire and Christian Europe have in common in their diplomatic strategies, despite their greatly varying characteristics. The legal traditions, forms of rulership, political cultures and languages were inherently different in e.g. the Western Christian city-state Ragusa, the Eastern Orthodox elective principality of Wallachia, and the Muslim hereditary khanate of Crimea. To offer a synthesis, our research group brings together researchers from a wide range of areas, each contributing to the project with insights from their field of expertise. For each member’s research interests, see their personal profile below.

Gábor Kármán

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR

He published widely on the foreign policy of seventeenth-century Transylvania (especially its connections to confessional networks) and the history of the Ottoman tributary states. More details you will find here.

Marian Coman

PROJECT MEMBER

His main research interests include late medieval Wallachia (14th to 16th century), as seen through the lenses of charters, Renaissance cartography of Ottoman Europe, and travel writing in late medieval and Renaissance Europe. A sample of his writings is available here.

Zsuzsanna Cziráki

PROJECT MEMBER

Her field of research encompasses diplomatic relations between the Principality of Transylvania, the Habsburg Monarchy and the Ottoman Empire in the 16th and 17th centuries. For more details on her projects and activities click here.

Tetiana Grygorieva

PROJECT MEMBER

She has published on diplomatic relations and ceremonial communication between the Ottoman Empire, Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and Cossack Ukraine as well as about literary discourse in a diplomatic context. More information about her publications can be found here.

Zsuzsanna Hámori Nagy

PROJECT MEMBER

Her publications focus on the foreign policy of Prince Gábor Bethlen of Transylvania (1613–1629). Her main interest is the diplomatic contacts of Transylvania and France in the early modern era (16th–17th century). More details you will find here (in Hungarian).

Magdalena Jakubowska

PROJECT MEMBER

She is working on her thesis ‘In the service of king or chancellor? Polish-Lithuanian diplomats’ activity during the Long Turkish War’ (1597–1606). Her academic interests include early modern diplomatic everyday life and material culture. More details you will find here or here.

Natalia Królikowska-Jedlińska

PROJECT MEMBER

Her research interests center around the history of the Crimean Khanate in the early modern period, especially its relations with the Ottoman empire and the Northern Caucasus. More details you will find here.

Lovro Kunčević

PROJECT MEMBER

He has published on the diplomacy, institutions, and ideology of late medieval and early modern Dubrovnik (Ragusa). For more details click here.

Radu G. Păun

PROJECT MEMBER

He is a specialist of South-East Europe (16th–18th centuries), interested in the theology of power, the devotional practices, and the relations between Christian Europe and the Ottoman world. For more details, click here.

Vedran Stojanović

PROJECT MEMBER

His research interests are mainly focused on the Republic of Ragusa in the late Middle Ages and early modern period, specifically the history of its historiography, its international position and the Italian-Ragusan relations. You can find more details here (in Hungarian) and here.

Ágnes Szalai

PROJECT MEMBER

Her research interests (including the topic of her PhD dissertation) focus on the history of government and diplomacy in the Principality of Transylvania under Prince Mihály Apafi I (1661−1690).  More details you will find here (in Hungarian) or here.

Michał Wasiucionek

PROJECT MEMBER

His research focuses on the place of the Danubian principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia within the broader of diplomatic, cultural, and political networks of seventeenth-century Ottoman Empire and Eastern Europe.

Csaba Göncöl

EXTERNAL CONTRIBUTOR

Csaba Göncöl’s field of interests are the history, philology, and Turkic chronicles of the Golden Horde (13th-15th centuries) and it’s successor-states (primarily the Crimean Khanate, 15th-18th centuries), as well as Hungarian-Habsburg-Ottoman diplomatic relationships (16th-17th centuries). See more details under the link, and his bibliography.

Domagoj Madunić

EXTERNAL CONTRIBUTOR

Domagoj Madunić has published widely on Early Modern history of Venetian Dalmatia and the Republic of Ragusa, espescially on the topics related to the War for Crete (1645-1669). His main area of interests are: Military History, Ottoman tributary states and Digital humanities. More details can be found here  (in Croatian) or here.

Csilla Virág

RESEARCH ASSISTANT

Her research is focused on Early Modern English social and cultural history. She is writing her dissertation on sixteenth–seventeenth-century minstrels and musicians. More details you will find here or here.