Franz-Julius MORCHE

Research Associate

 

Short bio

Julius was educated at the University of London and the Institut d’études politiques de Paris (Sciences Po) and conducted his doctoral research at the University of Heidelberg. His doctoral thesis investigates the role of the merchant family in the institutional framework of Venetian long-distance trade in the fifteenth century on the basis of a micro-historical case study. His wider research interests focus on the organisation of mercantile networks (with specific respect to late medieval and Renaissance Italy and the Eastern Mediterranean), the means of political communication in mercantile correspondence, and the history of European integration since the Late Middle Ages.

 

Current research focus

• Personal and impersonal communication in Italian letters (1300-1600)
• Formation and dynamics of communication networks
• Family models and elite history
• Colonialism: history, historiography, current perceptions
• Formation and disintegration of imperial structures

 

Forthcoming publications

Edited Volume: Union in Separation – Diasporic Communities in the Eastern Mediterranean (1100-1900), Heidelberg Studies on Asia and Europe in a Global Context, Heidelberg: Springer, forthcoming 2014 (with S. Burkhardt, G. Christ, W. Kaiser, R. Zaugg)

Article: “The Dolfin Connection – A Medieval Venetian Trade Network”, in: ibid., forthcoming 2014

 

Recent presentations

• “The Political Dimensions of Venetian Merchant Networks”, Workshop “Sharing Science and Knowledge in the Medieval Levant”, King’s College London, 28 September 2013 (revised version of paper given at IMC 2013, see below)
• “The Political Dimensions of Venetian Merchant Networks”, International Medieval Congress, Leeds, July 2013
• “Family and Business in Venetian Eastern Mediterranean Trade – The Case of Lorenzo Dolfin, Institute of Historical Research, Late Medieval and Early Modern Italy Seminar, 25 October 2012