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Personal Profile

I studied History and English at the University of Bern and completed doctoral research on late medieval parishes at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. Following a research fellowship at Magdalene College, a Swiss National Science Foundation project on public houses and acting as Peter Blickle's assistant, I joined º£½ÇÉçÇø's History Department in January 2001. Since then, I obtained a Habilitation in early modern history (Bern 2005) and held visiting appointments, fellowships or secondments at (2011-12), (Alfried Krupp Wissenschafts-kolleg, 2012-13), (2015 and 2018), (McGill 2022, ), (ULB/VUB , 2023) and (2023). In 2014, I directed º£½ÇÉçÇø's and, from 2020-23, the 'Food & Drink Cultures' strand of º£½ÇÉçÇø's .

I am a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society / Higher Education Academy and a member of the conseil scientifique of the Together with at McGill, I co-edit Bloomsbury's '' series (see flyer in margin) and serve on boards of the journals and as well as Adam Matthew's . Involvement in other scholarly bodies includes the º£½ÇÉçÇø Network for Parish Research (as My-Parish co-ordinator), (co-founder), (committee member 2005-8), (committee member 2012-19) and the . In Switzerland, I was appointed a for heritage and helped to assess (post-)doctoral scholarship applications submitted to the .

Privately, I follow the changing fortunes   and keenly explore all aspects of Italian gastronomy. Together with my family I enjoy travelling and skiing in the Alps.

 

Undergraduate Teaching

At º£½ÇÉçÇø, I have convened / contributed to three core modules ...

• Making History / The Historian's ToolkitLink opens in a new window (Year 1)
• The European World (Year 2) & Europe in the Making (Year 1; both using our Routledge )

... and directed two options:

• Reformation, Politics & Rebellion in 16thC Germany (Year 2; reflected in and resources)
• The World of the Tavern in Early Modern Europe (drawing on the source edition)

Elsewhere, I have taught UG modules on popular religion, Reformation change and drinking cultures at Bern, Bielefeld, Cambridge & Konstanz. In 2023, I co-hosted a Eutopia (Dresden, ).

 

Postgraduate Training

I teach on our and - as Director of PG Research - ran the Graduate Research Forum and contributed to related university events. Further afield, I taught a masters option at Bielefeld / Germany in 2011, and co-directed five annual of the European Institute for the History and Cultures of Food at Tours / France (2014-18). External examining experience includes PhD / DPhil / MA by Research theses at Birmingham, Brussels, Dresden, EUI Florence, Gloucestershire, Hull, Oxford, St Andrews, Trinity College Dublin, UCL, CEU Vienna and postgraduate taught programmes at , , and York.

I always welcome proposals for PhD / MA research projects in any field of early modern European history, particularly those relating to the social, religious & cultural history of local communities. Current research students include:

• Angus Crawford, 'Almshouse, Guild, and Town Community: The Lord Leycester Hospital in its Urban Setting, c. 1571-1700' (with Naomi Pullin & Angela Nicholls, in collaboration with the Lord Leycester Hospital; profile)
• Jeanne Dufresne, 'Representations of Poor Itinerant Women in Early-Modern England and France' (based in the Renaissance Centre, with Angela McShane and Penny Roberts; profile)
• Kristi Flake, 'The Impact of the Book of Homilies on the English Reformation and the Development of English Protestantism 1547-1714' (with Mark Knights & Peter Marshall; profile)
• Daniel Meldon, 'º£½ÇÉçÇøshire Identities – Early Modern Archival Perspectives' (with Naomi Pullin, in collaboration with º£½ÇÉçÇøshire County Record Office; profile)

 
Completed PhD / MA by Research projects:

• James Brown, ' (PhD University of º£½ÇÉçÇø, 2008), now a at Sheffield
• Joe Chick, 'Cloisters and Clothiers: The Social Impact of Reading's Transition from Monastic Lordship to Self-Governance, 1350-1600' (PhD University of º£½ÇÉçÇø, 2020; ; ; )
• Daniel Gettings, 'More than Just a Substance: Uses and Perceptions of Fresh Waters in Early Modern English Society' (PhD University of º£½ÇÉçÇø, 2025; profile)
• Paula McBride, 'Magic and Witchcraft in the Early Modern English Midlands' (MA by Research, 2014, )
• John E. Morgan, '' (PhD University of º£½ÇÉçÇø, 2016), now a in Historical Geography at Bristol
• Angela Nicholls, ' (PhD University of º£½ÇÉçÇø, 2014; with Steve Hindle; now an of the Department
• Serin Quinn, 'From Xitomatl to Love Apple: The Introduction of the Tomato to England, c. 1500-1800' (PhD University of º£½ÇÉçÇø, 2025; with Rebecca Earle; )
• Maria Tauber, 'The Making of English Politicians: Early Modern MPs and the Transformation of the Media System' (PhD University of º£½ÇÉçÇø, 2024; with Mark Knights; profile)

 

 

The 'Alte Wirt', a sixteenth-century inn at Obermenzing near Munich. .

 

Research Interests

My field is the cultural history of German-speaking Europe and England (c. 1400-1800). In particular, I work on political/religious/social life, food/drink consumption & memory in local communities over the early modern period.

Principal research themes include:

1. Local memory and trans-generational communication: a funded project on depositions of chronicles & objects into tower capsules placed on top of buildings across the German lands since the Middle Ages ( / / lectures, , websites in English / , ).
2. Parish communities in the 'long' Reformation: see books like ; ; ; , , contributions to the & advising on º£½ÇÉçÇøshire Parish Accounts
3. Food, drink & social exchange: reflected in my roles in º£½ÇÉçÇø's Food GRP & the 'Social Sites' network; books like , , , ; the source collection ; and a .
4. Rural self-government in the Holy Roman Empire: a Fellowship at the in Greifswald led to / publications on  & (esp. Gersau & Dithmarschen).
    

Collaborative ventures help to set these topics in a wider interdisciplinary framework:

• Migration-related research with 2020-22 IAS Fernandes Fellow Dr Marjolein Schepers and 2022-25 Leverhulme Early Career Fellow Dr Tom Pert at the Renaissance Centre;
• Acting as Advisory Board member for Prof. Felicita TramontanaLink opens in a new window's ERC project at Roma Tre, following her Marie SkÅ‚odowska-Curie fellowship on migration at the Renaissance Centre (2016-18; ) & joining the Scientific Committee of the ERC project at the University of Vienna (2025-)
• The '', with the associated community platform '' and the annual '', alongside the ;
• The º£½ÇÉçÇø-founded '', which facilitates workshops, an annual symposium and new research initiatives (I co-directed its '' cluster and sit on the advisory board);
• The 2018-19 Humanities Research Centre Workshop series on the theme of PASSIONLink opens in a new window.

 

 

Public Engagement

My research on food, drink, local memory and popular culture offers good outreach opportunities. Examples include helping actress Marta Dusseldorp exploring her Swiss (innkeeping) ancestry for the Australian '' series & participating in a TV debate on the . Reflections on the drinking problem appeared in national newspapers & The TimesLink opens in a new window plus the online platform , while tower capsules featured in the German magazine, Swiss daily and on . Radio interviews have focused on the (Austrian ORF), shifts in drinking culture, what we can find on top of towers in the German lands () and English Easter customs ():

Interpreting drinking statistics for UK

Exploring the contents & meanings of tower capsules for

I regularly support local history initiatives here & abroad. In Switzerland, I helped to celebrate the micro-republic of Gersau (see of my address to the Landsgemeinde and the public debate on political 'freedom' in 2014); in º£½ÇÉçÇøshire, I have appeared the '' History Festival (2017/24), co-hosted a workshop on parish records at the (2024) and addressed several History Societies in the county.

In other activities, I produced several learning resources, wrote for A-level audiences, discussed the '', directed the FEAST! theme for Coventry UK City of Culture, took over the of the Ecclesiastical History Society and participated in public round table events on 'parishes & migration' and ''.

More detailed information appears on my '' and pages.

Selected Publications

 
A full list appears here
 
a) Books / edited collections

 
 

C. Scott Dixon & Beat Kümin (eds),

Interpreting Early Modern Europe
(London: Routledge, 2019)

/ 20% Discount Flyer - as hardcopy/paperback/e-book, featuring surveys on the historiography of key themes in the period, with extracts from primary sources & secondary works. Reviews , +

 

 

 

Beat Kümin,

Imperial Villages: Cultures of Political Freedom in the German Lands c. 1300-1800
Studies in Central European Histories Volume 65
(Leiden: Brill Publishing, 2019)

, Book Flyer   Reviews , + Rezensionen +

 

 

 

 

Beat Kümin,
The Shaping of a Community: The Rise & Reformation of the English Parish c. 1400-1560
St Andrews Studies in Reformation History
(Aldershot and Brookfield/Vermont: Scolar Press, 1996)
[]

 

 

 

 
Beat Kümin,
Drinking Matters: Public Houses and Social Exchange in Early Modern Central Europe
Early Modern History: Society and Culture
(Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007)

; Reviews: /

 

 

 

 

Beat Kümin (ed.),
A Cultural History of Food in the Early Modern Age
(Oxford: Berg, 2012) & now also accessible digitally on the platform
[= Vol. 4 of the six-part series A Cultural History of Food, gen. eds. F. Parasecoli & P. Scholliers]

Publisher Information (, / )  

 

 

 

Beat Kümin,
The Communal Age in Western Europe c. 1100-1800: Towns, Villages and Parishes in Pre-Modern Society
Studies in European History
(Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013)

 

 

 

 

 
 

Beat Kümin (ed.),
The European World 1500-1800: An Introduction to Early Modern History (London: Routledge, 2009;
enlarged 2nd & 3rd edns, 2014 & 2018; 2023 flyer - see what's new in these videos!)

; (with interactive map, image gallery, timeline, glossary & weblinks);
; reviews of the first edn in , and

 

 

 

 

 

 

B. Kümin (ed.),
Politische Freiheit und republikanische Kultur im Alten Europa. Historische Essays zum Gedenkjahr "Gersau 2014"
[Political Freedom and Republican Culture in Old Europe. Historical Essays for the Bicentary "Gersau 2014"]
(Vitznau: Bucher Druckmedien, 2015) [includes Kümin, 'Vom Reichsdorf zur Republic: Grundlagen und Entwicklung der politischen Freiheit in Gersau', 93-8]

Available for CHF 19.50 at
Open Access to Full TextLink opens in a new window

 

 

 

 

 

Michele Ferrari and Beat Kümin (eds),
[Pre-modern Parishes: Identity and Culture in Local Ecclesiastical Life], Wolfenbütteler Forschungen 146
(Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2017) [includes regional / thematic essays in four languages plus M. Ferrari & B. Kümin, ’Einführung – Pfarreien in der Vormoderne’, 9-22] [pre-print versionLink opens in a new window; publication / ordering flyerLink opens in a new window; ; ; ; ]

 

 

 

 
b) Articles and essays

• B. Kümin, ‘ [Review Essay]’, in: German History 27 (2009), 131-44
• B. Kümin, '', Food & History 7 (2/2009), pp. 29-42
• B. Kümin and Cornelie Usborne, 'At home and in the workplace: A historical introduction to the spatial turn', in: History & Theory 52 (2013), 305-16 [introduction to a FORUM collection on '']
• B. Kümin, 'Kirchgenossen an der Macht. Vormoderne politische Kultur in den "Pfarreirepubliken" von Gersau und Dithmarschen [Parishioners in Power: Premodern political culture in the "parish republics" of Gersau and Dithmarschen]', in:  41 (2/2014), 187-230 []
• B. Kümin, 'Rural autonomy and popular politics in imperial villages', in: German History 33 (2/2015), 194-213 [] [original versionLink opens in a new window]
• B. Kümin, 'Parish churches in the early modern world: An afterword', in: Andrew Spicer (ed.), Parish Churches in the Early Modern World (Farnham: Ashgate, 2016), 385-391 [] [pre-print versionLink opens in a new window]
• B. Kümin, 'Rural Society', in: Ulinka Rublack (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of the Protestant Reformations (Oxford: University Press, 2016), chapter 25, pp. 525-45 [] [] []
• B. Kümin, ‘Parish religion in late medieval and Reformation England: The evidence from churchwardens’ accounts’, in: Andrea Tilatti and Roberto Alloro (eds), Redde rationem: Contabilità parrocchiali tra medioevo e prima età moderna, Quaderni di Storia Religiosa XXI (Caselle di Sommacampagna: Cierre edizioni, 2016), 231-248 [ / abstract]
• B. Kümin, 'Gersau, Innerschweiz und Europa : Kirchenmodelle im Zeitalter der Reformationen [Gersau, Central Switzerland and Europe: Church Models in the Age of Reformations]', in: Der Geschichtsfreund: Mitteilungen des Historischen Vereins der Fünf Orte Luzern, Uri, Schwyz, Unterwalden ob dem Wald und nid dem Wald und Zug 171 (2018), 9-20 []
• B. Kümin and Felicita Tramontana, 'Catholicism decentralized: Local religion in the early modern periphery', in: 89 (2/2020), 268-287 [free to share versionLink opens in a new window]
• B. Kümin, 'Wirtshäuser auf dem Prüfstand: Zur sozialen Ambivalenz öffentlicher Trinkkulturen in der Frühen Neuzeit [Testing Taverns: On the Social Ambivalence of Public Drinking in Early Modern Europe]', in:  28 (2/2020), 229-49 [accepted version]
• B. Kümin, '', in: Food and Drink in History (Adam Matthew Digital, 2020)
• B. Kümin, 'Cultural Representations', in: B. Ann Tlusty (ed.), (London: Bloomsbury, 2021), 159-177 [review1] []
• Dorota Dias-Lewandowska, Laura Fenton, Sam Goodman & Beat Kümin, ‘Altered states: Changing conditions of excess in European drinking cultures’, in: G. Hunt, T. Antin & V. Asmussen Frank (eds), Routledge Handbook of Intoxicants and Intoxication (London: Routledge, 2022), 501-22 [ + ] []
• Rebecca Earle & B. Kümin, 'Food and Drink Cultures', in: B. Kümin (ed.), The European World 1500-1800: An Introduction to Early Modern History (London: Routledge, 2023), 289-300 []
• Beat Kümin, '', in: The Digital Encyclopedia of British Sociability in the Long Eighteenth Century [online], ISSN 2803-2845, URL: (accessed 07/12/2022) & '', ibid., URL: (accessed 23/1/2023)
• Beat Kümin, '', in: Religion and Urbanity Online, edited by Susanne Rau & Jörg Rüpke (Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, 1/2023) DOI:
• Beat Kümin, '', in: Maria Amélia Campos (ed.), Essays on Lay and Ecclesiastical Communities in and Around the Medieval Urban Parish, Investigação (Coimbra: Universidade de Coimbra, 2024), 315-22
• Beat Kümin, '', in: Cédric Brélaz, Thomas Lau, Hans-Joachim Schmidt & Siegfried Weichlein (eds), Patterns in the History of Polycentric Governance in European Cities: From Antiquity to the 21st Century (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2024), 153-67 [] []

FEATURED

Beat Kümin, ' [Messages for Posterity: Tower Ball Archives in the Memory Culture of German-Speaking Europe], in: Historische Zeitschrift 312 (3/2021), 614-648 []

Beat Kümin, 'The Great German Peasants' War', in: History Today 75 (3/2025), 28-39 [feature article commissioned for the quincentenary of the German Peasants' War: / versions]

Beat Kümin, 'Das Wirtshaus als sozialer Ort [The Public House as a Social Site]', in: Südtiroler Landesmuseum für Volkskunde (ed.), gewisper - gerüchte - geschreÿ: Wirtshaus und Bauernkrieg 1525, Beiträge zur Volkskunde 5 (Dietenheim, 2025), 110-125 [near-final pdf VersionLink opens in a new window]

Beat Kümin, 'Peasant Portraits: Rural Self-Representations in the German Lands since the Middle Ages', in: Res historica 60 (2025), 265-283 [online publication 28/11/2025; ]

Beat Kümin, 'Transalpine Perspectives', in: Marta Gravela (ed.), Collective Voices in the Late Medieval and Early Modern Alps: Council Proceedings of Mountain Communities (1300-1530) = Annali dell’Istituto storico italo-germanico in Trento / Jahrbuch des italienisch-deutschen historischen Instituts in Trient special issue 52 (2026), 151-161 [online publication April 2026: ; ]

 

Researching the contents of tower capsules at St Johannis, Rosdorf (Lower Saxony / Germany),
which include a 1749 chronicle written by pastor Friedrich Wilhelm Leschen, with current parishioners.
Picture credits: Jan Stubenitzky (left), Harald Lisson (middle) and BK.

 

 

Professor Beat Kümin

Early Modern European History

On leave in 2026-27

Room: FAB, 3.49
Office Hours:
By appointment
(please check here)

Department of History
University of º£½ÇÉçÇø
Coventry CV4 7AL, U.K.
T: +44 (0)2476 524915
F: +44 (0)2476 523437
E-mail 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dresden-º£½ÇÉçÇø Summer School on the History of Violence (July 2023).

 

 

 

 

 

'Food & Drink Studies':
International Postgraduate
Summer University (Tours)
/ /
student reportLink opens in a new window on 2018

 

 

Joint Workshops for early modern PGR students at TU Dresden & º£½ÇÉçÇø have taken place in 2016 (Dresden) & 2021 (online)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A to our Food GRP

 

Information

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

See what's going on at

Discussing the 'Passion' workshop series run in 2018-19.

 

 

 

 

 
 

With Marta Dusseldorp at the Bear inn (Ins/Bern) in November 2018.

 
'The Renaissance from Below'?

Download this audio file

 

Debating the '' at the Resonate Festival (April 2022)