Leif Hammer
Research Topic
Reconstructing eighteenth-century scholarly mentalities: a comparative study of the University of Oxford and the University of Copenhagen
Supervisors: Professor Avi Lifschitz & Professor Laurence Brockliss
About my work
My main research area is eighteenth-century university history. My interests range from the Enlightenment (in England, Scotland, and Denmark-Norway) to vagrancy and with trials in early modern Scandinavia.
My main research area is eighteenth-century university history, though my interests range from vagrancy in early modern Norway to witch trials and the Enlightenment.
My doctoral work (begun in 2021) is a cultural history of scholarly communities at the universities of Oxford and Copenhagen, c. 1714-1820. I seek to compare and discuss how the similar and different factors and contexts, internal and external, affected the scholarly communities' cultures and vice versa. By doing so, I explore how eighteenth-century scholarly identities were created and performed, constructed, and perceived, and how they tied in with global networks of learning, such as the republic of letters.
I am funded by the Aker Scholarship Foundation.
Talks:
[Upcoming] "'Terror' and 'Devotion': Emotional Experiences at the University of Copenhagen, 1770-1773" (to be held at the History of Education Society's Annual Conference, Sheffield, 17-19 November 2023)
'"Decline" and the Cultural History of the Eighteenth-century University' (Graduate Seminar in History, 1680-1850, Lincoln College, Oxford, 24 January 2023)
Other research interests:
- Ludvig Holberg (1684-1754)
- early modern Scandinavia, esp. Denmark-Norway
- early modern British Isles, esp. England
- Enlightenment culture, networks, and literature
- early modern learned people and networks
- history of universities
- history of knowledge
- cultural history, esp. mentalités
- history of emotions
Previous degrees:
MLitt in Early Modern History (Distinction), University of St Andrews
BA in History, NTNU the Norwegian University of Science and Technology
