Vita

Hillard von Thiessen studied History, English Literature and Linguistics and Political Sciences at the Universities of Kiel, Edinburgh and Freiburg im Breisgau. In 2001, he earned his Dr. phil. at the University of Freiburg with a dissertation on “The Capuchins. A Reformed Order between Confessionalisation and Popular Culture in Freiburg and Hildesheim, 1591–1750“ (title translated; supervisor Wolfgang Reinhard). Subsequently, he worked at the University of Freiburg as a research assistant in a project on micropolitics in the foreign relations of the Roman Curia during the pontificate of Paul V Borghese (1605–1621); his research focus was official relations and informal networks between the Papal States and Spain. He carried on with this project at the University of Berne as assistant at the chair for early modern history and wrote his habilitation thesis on this topic, published in 2010 under the title (translated) “Diplomacy and Patronage. The relations between the Roman Curia and Spain 1605–1621 in an actor-centred view”. From 2007 on he taught at the University of Cologne as a Substitute Professor of Early Modern History until he was appointed Professor of Early Modern History at the University of Rostock in 2012/13. Since then, his research concentrates on transnational relations and new approaches to the history of diplomacy, corruption in the early modern period and concurrence of norms and values as a distinguishing feature of late medieval and early modern European societies. He has recently summed up his research on the last-mentioned topic in the book (title translated) “The Age of Ambiguity. How early modern contemporaries dealt with norms and values”.