Tim Hochstrasser

Experience Keywords

18th century; Britain; European Enlightenment; France; Germany; early modern Europe; historiography; history of music; history of political and social thought; intellectual history

Research Summary

My research focuses on the two-way relationship between intellectual life and political action in the history of early modern Europe, and above all on the use made of contemporary historical and philosophical writing to legitimate and defend changing concepts of sovereignty and political structure. The major case study for this research is the European Enlightenment (c. 1680-1830), with a particular focus on France and Germany.

My recent research has developed three linked pathways: the development of natural law discourses in the early German Enlightenment, which provided the focus for my first book, the scope and limits of Eighteenth-Century cosmopolitanism which I am exploring through continuing work on the Huguenot Diaspora, and the interface between political economy and practical politics in France in the era before the French Revolution. I also have research interests in the social history of music and in general historiography that extends beyond the range of the ''long'' Eighteenth Century.

Research Countries

Britain; France; Germany

Languages

French [Spoken: Intermediate, Written: Intermediate]; German [Spoken: Intermediate, Written: Intermediate]