• Personal profile
• Teaching activities
• Supervision of postgraduates
• Research interests
• Public engagement
• Publications (most recently European World, Cultural History of Food; forthcoming The Communal Age)
  
  
  

Profile

I was born in the Swiss city of Biel. Following a degree course in History and English at the University of Bern and postgraduate studies at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, my PhD thesis on 'The Late Medieval English Parish' - supervised by Patrick Collinson - was approved in 1993. During the following four years, I held a Research Fellowship at Magdalene College, Cambridge, where I served as Director of Studies in History in 1996. After a return to Bern - to pursue a Swiss National Science Foundation project on early modern public houses and to act as Peter Blickle's assistant - I joined Warwick's History Department in January 2001. On completion of my Habilitation in 2005, the University of Bern granted me the venia docendi in early modern history. In 2011-12 I was a guest lecturer at Bielefeld University and in 2012-13 a Senior Fellow of the Alfried Krupp Wissenschaftskolleg at Greifswald (reflected in the blog Greifswald Glosses).

I am a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, a member of the AHRC Peer Review College and serve on the editorial board of the journal Brewery History, the advisory panel of the Centre for the Study of Christianity and Culture at the University of York and the committee of the Warwickshire Local History Society. Involvement in other academic bodies includes the European Reformation Research Group, German History Society (Committee Member 2005-8), International Commission for Research into European Food History, the Social Sites Network (Principal Investigator 2005-8), the Warwick Drinking Studies Network and the Warwick Network for Parish Research.

Privately, I follow a number of lesser-known football teams and I am a keen explorer of Italian gastronomy. Together with my family I enjoy travelling and skiing in the Alps.

 

Undergraduate Teaching

At Warwick

Year II core module:
The European World 1500-1720 (HI203) 
(see the associated textbook The European World published by Routledge and the video of a debate on early modern historiography)

Year II option:
Germany in the Age of the Reformation (HI242)
(see the Historical Association's 'Reformation' podcast series with talks by Henry Cohn, Beat Kümin, Peter Marshall and Penny Roberts and the poster summary of the undergraduate research project undertaken by Martin Christ)

Year III advanced option:
The World of the Tavern in Early Modern Europe (HI390)
(see the associated source edition Public Drinking in the Early Modern World and a video recording of reflections on the interdisciplinary aspects of this module at the university's 'Teaching & Learning Showcase' 2011)

At other institutions

University of Hull, 2009-12
Chief external examiner of history programmes

Universität Bielefeld: BA Seminar 2011
English Reformations: Religion and Society under the Tudors 

Universität Bern: Übungen 1999 and 2007
'Wirtshäuser im Ancien Régime' and 'English Reformations: Religion und Gesellschaft im Zeitalter der Tudors'

University of Cambridge: 'Themes and Sources' Option 1995-98
Popular Religion before and after the Reformation

 

Postgraduate Teaching

Contributions to Warwick's MA in Religious, Social and Cultural History 1500-1750 and the Theory, Skills and Methods core module for all MA students

Participation in International Summer Schools of the Institut Européen d'Histoire et des Cultures de l' Alimentation / European Institute for the History and Culture of Food at Tours/France:
'Change, innovation and evolving food consumption patterns' (August 2005) and 'Wine: Economy and Social Norms' (August 2011)

MA Seminar at the University of Bielefeld 2011:
The World of the Tavern in Early Modern Europe: Conceptual Approaches in Transnational Perspective 
 

Supervision of Postgraduate Theses (PhD, MA)

I welcome proposals for research projects in any field of early modern European history, particularly those relating to the social, religious and cultural history of local communities. Current and past topics (co-)supervised include:

Research students (MPhil/PhD, MA by Research)

• Ruth Barbour, 'The "Common Sort of Catholic" in Warwickshire 1660-1820'
• Matthew Jackson, 'Drink and Identity: A Comparative Case Study of Early Modern Bristol and Bordeaux' (e-portfolio; with Penny Roberts)
• Paula McBride, 'Magic and Witchcraft in the Early Modern English Midlands' (e-portfolio)
• John Morgan, 'Negotiating hazardous landscapes: regions of risk and cultures of coping in early modern Britain' (e-portfolio)
• Angela Nicholls, 'Housing the Poor in Early Modern England' (e-portfolio; with Steve Hindle)
• Matthew Wakeman, 'Table Games in Tudor England' (e-portfolio)
• Donald P. White, 'Out of the Woods: The Elaboration of Late medieval Cornwall Parishes' (e-portfolio)
  
  Completed:
• James Brown, 'The Landscape of Drink: Inns, Taverns and Alehouses in Early Modern Southampton' (PhD University of Warwick, 2008; e-portfolio)

Taught MA dissertations

• James Brown, 'The spatial reordering of the English parish church in the 1630s' (2003)
• Anna Dawson, 'Parlours in Eighteenth-Century England' (with Mark Knights)
• Angela Hopkins, 'Religion in Lincolnshire 1547-1576' (2002)
• Matthew Jackson, 'Women, Drink and Agency in Early Modern England and France' (2010)
• Denise Lim, 'Luther's Writings on Women' (2011)
• Sam Luton, 'A Flow of Soul: Taverngoing and Ethnic Interaction in Antebellum New Orleans' (2002)
• John Morgan, 'Coping with Disaster in Early Modern England' (2012)
• Maria Nicolaou, 'Marriage and Divorce in Early Modern England' (2012)
• Ruth Sanger, 'Dudley in Disneyland: Construction of Power and Identity at Kenilworth Castle' (2002)
• Charlie Small, 'Sailors and Drink in Early Modern England' (2012)
• Deborah Toner, 'Food and Alcohol in Colonial Mexico' (2006)

External examiner of postgraduate theses at Birmingham, TU Dresden, Gloucestershire, Hull, Trinity College Dublin, UCL.

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

[source]

 

Research Activities

My general field is the cultural history of German-speaking Europe and England (c. 1400-1800). In particular, I work on political agency, religious life and social exchange in local communities during the early modern period.

My research focuses on three main themes:

1. Parish communities in the 'long' Reformation
2. Public houses (inns, taverns, alehouses) in early modern life
3. Village republics in the Holy Roman Empire

Communal organization allowed common people enhanced influence, be it in English localities or the republican polities of Central Europe. Social exchange centred on microspaces like town halls, market squares, parish churches and public houses. My work has concentrated on the latter two: Through lay-controlled funds and representatives like churchwardens, parishioners assumed a growing role in the late medieval Church and shaped the course of Reformation change (see book publications The Shaping of a Community; The Parish in English Life, Landgemeinde und Kirche, the forthcoming monograph The Communal Age in Western Europe c. 1100-1800 and contributions to the English Parish Church DVD). Public houses, in turn, were not just providers of food, drink and sociability, but communal hubs of communication and political culture (cf. The World of the Tavern, Drinking Matters, Brewing Cultures and Public Drinking in the Early Modern World).

An ongoing microhistorical project, supported by a British Academy research grant, focuses on the village of Gersau on Lake Lucerne, a self-governing mini-republic (with patronage rights over its own church) from the late Middle Ages to 1798. This parish of some 1000 souls, with no nobility and only loose ties to four Swiss Catholic cantons, provides a unique opportunity to study a genuinely 'popular' regime, i.e. early modern political, socio-economic and religious life with minimal pressure 'from above'. I am currently involved in the preparation of the bicentenary celebrations of the (temporary) restoration of the republic in 1814. For information on all activities see the project homepage.

During my study leave in 2012-13, I am taking a wider comparative look at rural autonomy in early modern Central Europe. 'Communal Culture - Communal Power: Parishes in the Holy Roman Empire' is supported by a Senior Research Fellowship of the Alfried Krupp Wissenschaftskolleg at Greifswald/Germany.

 

Several collaborative ventures have helped to set this research in a wider interdisciplinary framework:

• The 'Warwick Network for Parish Research' , with the associated community platform 'My-Parish' and the annual 'Warwick Symposium on Parish Research', co-hosted with my colleagues Steve Hindle, Peter Marshall and Penny Roberts (hear the podcast featuring interviews from the sixth symposium on 'parish pieties').
  
  
• The 'Warwick Drinking Studies Network', which links scholars from different disciplines at this university and elsewhere. It organizes workshops, an annual symposium and facilitates research initiatives.
  
  
• The European Science Foundation exploratory workshop on 'The Historical Formation of European Drinking Cultures: Regions, Methods, Sources' co-organized with Angela McShane (Victoria & Albert Museum) and Phil Withington (Cambridge) at Venice in September 2010.
  
  
• The international network 'Social Sites - Öffentliche Räume - Lieux d'échanges 1300-1800' , established with colleagues from the Universities of Dresden and Paris I and supported by an 'Academic Collaboration' grant from the Leverhulme Trust (2005-8). This initiative investigated perceptions of space in premodern Europe, with reference both to contemporary awareness and modern theoretical approaches. Dissemination activities included a panel on 'Microspace and Larger World' at the German Historikertag 2004 in Kiel (video recording) and several collections of essays, including Political Space in Preindustrial Europe (published by Ashgate in 2009).
  
  

• The Mellon-Newberry-Project of the Centre for the Study of the Renaissance, especially its first cycle 'Culture, Space and Power: Peopling the Built Environment in Renaissance England c. 1450-1700', which I co-directed in 2006.

 

A Sixteenth-Century German Public House (Barthel Beham, 'Country Fair', c. 1534)

[M. Geisberg (ed.), The German Single-Leaf Woodcut 1500-50 (New York, 1974), i. 132]

 

 Public Engagement

Details of a range of activities appear on my 'public engagement' page.

 

Publications

a) Books / edited collections

B. 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) [review]

! Available again from Ashgate !

 

B. Kümin (ed.), Reformations Old and New: Essays on the Socio-Economic Impact of Religious Change c. 1470-1630 (St Andrews Studies in Reformation History, Aldershot and Brookfield/Vermont: Scolar Press, 1996) [review]

! Available again from Ashgate !

 

K. French, G. Gibbs and B. Kümin (eds), The Parish in English Life 1400-1600 (Manchester: University Press, 1997) [review]

B. Kümin and B. Ann Tlusty (eds), The World of the Tavern: Public Houses in Early Modern Europe (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, 2002) [content and ordering information] [review]

B. Kümin (ed.), Landgemeinde und Kirche im Zeitalter der Konfessionen [Rural Communities and the Church in the Age of Confessions] (Zürich: Chronos Verlag, 2004) [content and ordering information: web / pdf-file] [review]

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

Content and availability pdf flyer e-book version review: html / pdf

See also the WARWICK PODCAST series on aspects of the book.

 

B. Kümin (ed.), The European World: An Introduction to Early Modern History
(London: Routledge, 2009)

Contents & Availability Companion Website Review Rezension

 

B. Kümin (ed.), Political Space in Pre-industrial Europe
(Aldershot: Ashgate, 2009)

Book Flyer (pdf) Contents and Availability e-book 'Introduction' Rezensionen: 1 2 3

 

 

 

B. Kümin (ed.), 'Brewing Cultures in Early Modern Towns', special issue of Brewery History 135 (2010)
[featuring refereed essays by James Brown, Katja Lindenau, Tim Reinke-Williams and Masatake Wasa]

Contents and Availability Introduction and Notes on Contributors (pdf) FREE ACCESS TO FULL ISSUE

 

 

 

B. Kümin and B. Ann Tlusty (eds), Public Drinking in the Early Modern World 1500-1800: Voices from the Tavern Vols 2-3: The Holy Roman Empire (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2011) An extensive collection of translated primary sources (travel reports, registers of public houses, taxation records, diaries, moral literature, court proceedings etc) from German-speaking Europe, especially the imperial free city of Augsburg, the principality of Bavaria and the Swiss city republic of Bern. The other two volumes in the series, edited by Thomas Brennan, feature evidence from France and America. Contents and Availability  Introduction (pre-print version)

 
B. Kümin (ed.), A Cultural History of Food in the Early Modern Age (Oxford: Berg, 2012)

[= Vol. 4 of the six-part series A Cultural History of Food, gen. eds. F. Parasecoli and P. Scholliers]

Contents and Availability

Dustjacket

Introduction

 

b) Recent essays

(a fuller list appears here)

• B. Kümin, 'Sacred church and worldly tavern: Reassessing an early modern divide', in: W. Coster and A. Spicer (eds), Sacred Space in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: UP, 2005), 17-38
• B. Kümin, 'Taverne, Bad und Take Away - Das Worber Gastgewerbe zwischen Mittelalter und Moderne [Inn, bathing house and take away: Commercial hospitality at Worb between Medieval and Modern Times]', in: H. R. Schmidt (ed.), Worber Geschichte (Bern, 2005), 634-51
• B. Kümin, ‘Das vormoderne Wirtshaus im Spannungsfeld zwischen Arbeit und Freizeit [The premodern public house between the poles of work and leisure]’, in: Hans-Jörg Gilomen, Beatrice Schumacher and Laurent Tissot (eds), Freizeit und Vergnügen vom 14. bis zum 20. Jahrhundert (Zurich: Chronos, 2005), 87-98
• B. Kümin, ‘Friede, Gewalt und öffentliche Räume: Grenzziehungen im alteuropäischen Wirtshaus [Peace, Violence and Public Space: Drawing Boundaries in the Early Modern Public House’], in: Claudia Ulbrich, Claudia Jarzebowski and Michaela Hohkamp (eds), Gewalt in der Frühen Neuzeit: Beiträge zur 5. Tagung der Arbeitsgemeinschaft Frühe Neuzeit im VHD, Historische Forschungen Bd. 81 (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 2005), 130-9
• B. Kümin, ‘Drinking and public space in early modern German lands’, in: Contemporary Drug Problems: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly 32 (Spring 2005), 9-27
• B. Kümin, ‘Wirtshaus, Verkehr und Kommunikationsrevolution im frühneuzeitlichen Alpenraum [Public House, Road Transport and the "Communication Revolution" in the Early Modern Alps]’, in: Zeitsprünge: Forschungen zur Frühen Neuzeit 9 (3-4/2005), 376-393
• B. Kümin, 'Wirtshäuser und Bäder [Public Houses and Spas]', in: A. Holenstein (ed.), Berns Mächtige Zeit. Das 16. und 17. Jahrhundert neu entdeckt (Bern, 2006), 544-50
• B. Kümin, ‘The secular legacy of the late medieval English parish’, in: C. Burgess and E. Duffy (eds), The Parish in Late Medieval England, Harlaxton Medieval Studies XIV (Donington: Shaun Tyas, 2006), 95-111 and pl. 1-4 [link to pre-print version]
• B. Kümin, ‘Public Houses and Civic Tensions in Early Modern Bern’, in: Urban History 34 (1/2007), 89-101
• B. Kümin, ‘Wirtshaus, Reiseverkehr und Raumerfahrung am Ausgang des Mittelalters [Public Houses, Road Traffic and the Experience of Space at the Close of the Middle Ages]’, in: Rainer C. Schwinges (ed.), Strassen- und Verkehrswesen im Mittelalter, Vorträge und Forschungen LXVI (Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 2007), 331-52
• B. Kümin, ‘Popular Culture and Sociability’, in: P. Wilson (ed.), A Companion to Eighteenth-Century Europe (Oxford: Blackwell, 2008), 192-207
• B. Kümin, ‘Das Gastgewerbe als Wirtschaftsfaktor [Commercial hospitality as an economic factor]’, in: André Holenstein (ed.), Berns goldene Zeit: Das 18. Jahrhundert neu entdeckt (Bern: Stämpfli, 2008), 114
• B. Kümin, 'Wirtshausgeschichte. Das Gastgewerbe in der historischen Frühneuzeitforschung [Commercial hospitality in early modern historiography]', in: Peter Friedrich and Rolf Parr (eds), Gastlichkeit. Erkundungen einer Schwellensituation (Heidelberg: Synchron, 2009), 117-31 [pdf-flyer] [review]
• B. Kümin, ‘Political Culture in the Holy Roman Empire [Review Essay]’, in: German History 27 (2009), 131-44
• B. Kümin, 'Iconographical approaches to the early modern public house', in: Food & History 7 (2/2009) , 29-42
• B. Kümin, 'Introduction' [to special issue 'Brewing Cultures in Early Modern Towns'], in: Brewery History 135 (2010), 2-7
• B. Kümin [associate editor of / author of contributions on late medieval worship, Christian community, parishes, laity, churchwardens, finance and fundraising, secular/political dimensions and parish-state relations in:] The English Parish Church Through the Centuries, ed. Dee Dyas et al. (Interactive CD-ROM, Christianity and Culture, 2010)
• B. Kümin, ‘In vino res publica? Politische Soziabilität im Wirtshaus der Frühen Neuzeit‘, in: G. Schwerhoff (ed.), Stadt und Öffentlichkeit in der Frühen Neuzeit, Städteforschung: Reihe A, vol. 83 (Cologne: Böhlau, 2011), 65-79 [publisher information]
  
• B. Kümin, ‘La parrocchia "dal basso": strutture comunali e vita religiosa a nord delle Alpi nel tardo medioevo [The Parish from Below: Communal Structures and Religious Life north of the Alps in the Late Middle Ages]‘, in: S. Boscani Leoni and P. Ostinelli (eds), La Chiesa dal "basso". Organizzazioni, interazioni e pratiche nel contesto parrocchiale alpino alla fine del medioevo (Milan: FrancoAngeli, 2012), 17-33 [publisher information]

 

 

The Parish Church of St Andrew, Ashburton (Devon)

[source]

 

 

Prof. Beat Kümin

Early Modern European History

Contact Information

Humanities, Room H 313
Office hours:
Wed 5-6, Thu 10-11

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

'Peasant fishing'
(15thC; Horley, Oxon)
Photo: BK

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

See what's going on at My-Parish

 Project Homepage

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

See my blog 'Greifswald Glosses'

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hear me talk on pre-modern public houses in the Dimensionen programme of national Austrian radio station Oe1

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Contents & availability