Jan Hennings

My work has focused on Russian-European diplomatic encounters in the early modern period. I am interested in the connections between ritual and politics in early modern societies, particularly in cross-cultural contexts. I have used the evolution of Russian diplomatic culture in the second half of the seventeenth and the early eighteenth centuries as a basis for exploring how seemingly circumstantial aspects of diplomacy - ceremonial formalities, protocol, and etiquette - shaped foreign relations and how ritual impacted on concrete action in early modern political life. My current project shifts the focus to include diplomatic exchanges between the Russian and Ottoman empires, concentrating on the first Russian resident embassy in Constantinople at the beginning of the eighteenth century.

Before moving to Budapest, I had held a Junior Research Fellowship at St John's College Oxford and taught history as a Visiting Assistant Professor and Gerda Henkel Fellow at Sabancı University in Istanbul. At CEU, I offer courses centred around comparative approaches to the history of diplomacy and early modern empires as well as on broader topics on Russia and the Ottoman world.

Previous courses that I have taught include 'Global Comparisons: Russia and the Ottoman Empire, 1453-1839' (together with Tijana Krstic)

KEY PUBLICATIONS

Russia and Courtly Europe: Ritual and the Culture of Diplomacy, 1648-1725 (New Studies in European History, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016)

(co-edited with T A Sowerby), Practices of Diplomacy in the Early Modern World c. 1410-1800 (Routledge Research in Early Modern History, London and New York: Routledge, 2017)

Awards and Fellowships

ESSA Book Prize 2017 for Russia and Courtly Europe. Awarded by the Early Slavic Studies Association, an affiliate organisation of the Association of Slavic, East European & Eurasian Studies (ASEEES)

Elected member of the Junge Akademie at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities (BBAW) and the German National Academy of Sciences – Leopoldina, 2016-2021

Gerda Henkel Fellowship, Sabancı University Istanbul, 2013-15

Junior Research Fellowship in Modern History, St John’s College Oxford, 2009-13.

Hedwig Hintze Dissertation Prize (German Historical Association, 2012)

Fritz T Epstein Dissertation Prize (German Association of Historians of Eastern European History, 2012)