Dr Kristine Dyrmann

I am a historian of women and gender with an interest in diplomatic practices and the materiality of informal political spaces in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. I completed my BA (2011) and MA (2014) in History and French at Aarhus University in Denmark. During that time, I also undertook studies at the Université de Cergy-Pontoise, and an internship at the Centre de recherche du Chateau de Versailles in France. I have also taught advanced-level French in an upper secondary school and been a visiting research student at the University of York. I joined the museum for Danish country house history at Gammel Estrup in 2017 and worked there alongside the completion of my PhD in History at Aarhus University (2021). From January 2021-June 2022, I held a research fellowship from the Danish Ministry for Culture before coming to the UK. I will be a Carlsberg Visiting Fellow at the University of Oxford from 2022-2024.

Research Interests

My research focuses on how the wives of a group of advisers to the Danish crown prince, later king Frederik 6 (1768-1839) participated in diplomatic practices and everyday political life. The crown prince and his advisers took power in 1784; from 1808-1814, Frederik 6 ruled as king of Denmark-Norway, then as king of Denmark from 1815. I am particularly interested in how the women of this elite political network engaged in practices of sociability and informal discussions related to Danish foreign policies during the time of transition that was the revolutionary and Napoleonic wars. My PhD dissertation was the first study beyond those focusing on queens to investigate the roles of Danish elite women in eighteenth-century politics and diplomacy. This research, and the project I am currently doing, is based on the close reading of archival sources - mainly correspondence, but also memoirs, journals, account books, and maps. I am interested in how women discussed matters of foreign and domestic policy amongst themselves through their correspondence, and in conversation with political actors, revealing their agency as integral to everyday practices of diplomacy. I am currently turning this research into a monograph on women’s informal political spaces and gendered diplomatic practices in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Denmark-Norway.

During my previous positions in the heritage sector I have examined servants in eighteenth-century Danish country houses, investigating the hierarchies and everyday experiences of servants at two country estates. I also worked collaboratively with the museum’s curatorial staff to discover everyday consumption practices at an eighteenth-century country house, incorporating a study on embodied practices of recreating the historical dress of masters and servants within the museum space.

You can follow me on Twitter @kristinedyrmann