Duncan Hardy, Ph.D.

• Assistant Professor
• Duncan.Hardy@ucf.edu
• Office Hours: Wednesdays 11am-1pm
• Campus Location: TCH312C
• View CV
• View personal website

Duncan Hardy is a historian of Central Europe - broadly defined - in the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries. He specializes in the history of the Holy Roman Empire - the vast entity at the heart of medieval and early modern Europe, which encompassed all or part of more than a dozen modern European countries. More generally, he is interested in models of state/polity formation and the debates around long-term political change in medieval and early modern Europe; religious conflicts and the late medieval and early modern Crusades; the history of diplomacy; the long history of the Reformation(s); and the comparative study of political cultures. 

He has just finished writing up his first book, Associative Political Culture in the Holy Roman Empire: Upper Germany, 1346-1521, which will be published in October 2018 in the Oxford Historical Monographs series. It argues that the political landscape of the Holy Roman Empire is best understood as a nexus of intertwined networks, formalized by and within leagues, alliances, and assemblies, challenging conventional interpretations of the Empire and European models of state formation more generally. His second project, which is in its preliminary research phase, examines processes of political and religious change, and particularly emerging concepts of reform, within the loose and multilateral framework of the Empire in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, with a view to rethinking the early Reformation in light of its political context.

Before joining the UCF Department of History, Duncan Hardy undertook undergraduate and graduate studies at the University of Oxford. He then held research fellowships at the Institute of Historical Research within the University of London and at the Université libre de Bruxelles in Belgium. In 2016 he was elected as a Title A Research Fellow at Trinity College in the University of Cambridge, a fellowship he will hold until 2020.

Education

• Ph.D. in History from University of Oxford (2015)

Research Interests

Early Modern Europe; Late Medieval Europe; Reformation History; Political History; German History; Central Europe; Holy Roman Empire; Political Culture.

Selected Publications

Books

• Forthcoming Associative Political Culture in the Holy Roman Empire: Upper Germany, 1346-1521 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018).

Articles/Essays

• “Tage (Courts, Councils, and Diets): Political and Judicial Nodal Points in the Holy Roman Empire, c. 1300-1550,” German History, 36 (3) (2018).
• “An Alsatian Nobleman’s Account of the Second Crusade against the Hussites in 1421: A New Edition, Translation, and Interpretation,” Crusades, 15 (2016): 199-221.
• “Reichsstädtische Bündnisse im Elsass als Beweise für eine “verbündende” politische Kultur am Oberrhein (ca. 1350-1500),” Zeitschrift für die Geschichte des Oberrheins, 162 (2014): 95-128.
• “The Hundred Years War and the ‘Creation’ of the Written English Vernacular: A Reassessment,” Marginalia, 17 (2013): 18-31.
• “The 1444-5 Expedition of the Dauphin Louis to the Upper Rhine in Geopolitical Perspective,” Journal of Medieval History, 38 (3) (2012): 358-387.

Book Sections/Chapters

• “The Emperorship of Sigismund of Luxemburg (1410-37): Charisma and Government in the Later Medieval Holy Roman Empire,” in Faces of Charisma: Image, Text, Object in Byzantium and the Medieval West, ed. Brigitte M. Bedos-Rezak and Martha D. Rust (Leiden: Brill, 2018), pp. 282-314.
• “Between Regional Alliances and Imperial Assemblies: Landfrieden as a Political Concept and Discursive Strategy in the Holy Roman Empire, c. 1350-1520,” in Landfrieden – epochenübergreifend. Neue Perspektiven der Landfriedensforschung auf Verfassung, Recht, Konflikt, ed. Hendrik Baumbach and Horst Carl,Zeitschrift für Historische Forschung. Beihefte, 54 (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 2018), pp. 85-120.
• “Burgundian Clients in the South-Western Holy Roman Empire, 1410-1477: Between International Diplomacy and Regional Political Culture,” in Practices of Diplomacy in the Early Modern World, c. 1410-1800, ed. Tracey A. Sowerby and Jan Hennings, Routledge Research in Early Modern History series (Abingdon/New York: Routledge, 2017), pp. 25-43.

Book Reviews

• Review of Annexer? Les déplacements de frontières à la fin du Moyen Âge, ed. Stéphane Péquignot and Pierre Savy (Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2016), English Historical Review, 133 (562) (2018): 690-92.
• Review of Christian Hoffarth, Urkirche als Utopie. Die Idee der Gütergemeinschaft im späteren Mittelalter von Olivi bis Wyclif (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2016), Renaissance Quarterly, 71 (2018): 340-42.
• Review of Konstantin Langmaier, Erzherzog Albrecht VI. von Österreich (1418-1463): Ein Fürst im Spannungsfeld von Dynastie, Regionen und Reich (Cologne: Böhlau, 2015), English Historical Review, 132 (556) (2017): 689-92.
• Review of Christian Heinemeyer, Zwischen Reich und Region im Spätmittelalter: Governance und politische Netzwerke um Kaiser Friedrich III. und Kurfürst Albrecht Achilles von Brandenburg (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 2016), German History, 35 (2) (2017): 312-14.
• Review of Nils Bock, Die Herolde im römisch-deutschen Reich: Studie zur adligen Kommunikation im späten Mittelalter (Ostfildern: Thorbecke, 2015), German History, 34 (2) (2016): 324-26.
• Review of Andreas Würgler, Die Tagsatzung der Eidgenossen. Politik, Kommunikation und Symbolik einer repräsentativen Institution im europäischen Kontext (1470-1798) (Warendorf: bibliotheca academica Verlag, 2013), English Historical Review, 130 (546) (2015): 1223-25.
• Review of Benjamin Müsegades, Fürstliche Erziehung und Ausbildung im spätmittelalterlichen Reich (Ostfildern: Thorbecke, 2014), German History, 33 (2) (2015): 280-81.

Awards

2017: Generallandesarchiv Karlsruhe - Johann Daniel Schöpflin Prize
2016: German History Society - German History Society Prize
2016-20: Trinity College, University of Cambridge - Title A Research Fellowship
2015-16: Wiener-Anspach Foundation - Postdoctoral Fellowship
2014-15: Institute of Historical Research, University of London - Scouloudi Fellowship
2014: German History Society - Annual Postgraduate Bursary
2014: University of Oxford, Faculty of History - Bryce Research Studentship
2012/2014: University of Oxford, Jesus College - T.E. Lawrence Award for Mediaeval History
2011-14: UK Arts and Humanities Research Council - Doctoral Award

Courses

• Spring 2019
• Fall 2018
• Summer 2018