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Birgit Tremml-Werner

About me

Senior lecturer in global history at Stockholm University since August 2023, Reader/associate professor (Linnaeus University 2023)

I received my PhD from the University of Vienna in 2012 with a dissertation about early modern Manila. The study looked into how diplomatic relations and the political economies of different empires affected trans-Pacfic trade and the social relations on the ground. It is available open access as Spain, China and Japan in Manila, 1571-1644: Local Comparisons and Global Connections (Amsterdam University Press, 2015) and was translated to Chinese in 2022. Before joining the history department at Stockholm University, I held various research position, among others as JSPS postoc at Tokyo University (2013-2015), as HERA research associate at the University of Zürich (2016-2019) and as researcher and MSCA fellow Linnaeus University (2021-2023).

 

Teaching

I teach on all levels from introduction courses to PhD courses.  My current teaching at SU includes Historia I (Delkurs 1: Historia som vetenskap och Dekurs 3: Tidigmoderna seminarium plus a lecture on racism in the early modern world), Historia III (seminar Teori och metod plus a lecture about Theory and Method).

Between 2020 and 2023 I tought primarily in the Master programme Colonial and Postcolonial Studies at Linnaeus University. 

I moreover teach different global history courses as at the University of the Philippines (Diliman, Baguio) as adjunct professor and at Universidad Autónoma de Madrid.

PhD supervision: Mathias Istrup Karlsmose (SU), Tamara Ann Tinner (LNU), Isak Kronberg (LNU).

Research projects

Encountering Diplomacy in Early Modern Southeast Asia: Actors, Practices, Translation

Encountering diplomacy in early modern Southeast Asia is a study in global history. It explores how diplomatic practices and foreign relations were shaped in maritime Southeast Asia's pluralistic, multi-centric, open geography during the 17th and 18th centuries. In this period, exchange between local polities and aspiring European colonial powers flourished.

Research

Publications

A selection from Stockholm University publication database

  • The Elephant in the Archive: Knowledge Construction and Late Eighteenth-Century Global Diplomacy

    2023. Birgit Tremml-Werner. Itinerario 47 (2), 185-202

    Article

    This article explores the dynamics behind global diplomacy and knowledge in Asian maritime empires in the late eighteenth century. The short-lived diplomatic exchange between the Kingdom of Mysore and the Spanish Philippines in 1776–7 provides a rich resource for an analysis of how global diplomatic agents coproduced material objects, images, and written records which in turn impacted politics and trade relations. The article makes at least four important interventions in the burgeoning field of new diplomatic history. First, it sheds light on certain aspects of growing research on Asian diplomatic encounters connecting the Indian Ocean and Southeast Asia; second, it offers insights into the manifold actors involved in creating and negotiating knowledge; third, it highlights the epistemological importance of the visual and material archives for the study of global diplomacy in the early modern period; and fourth, it challenges narratives of cross-cultural foreign relations which tend to overemphasise asymmetrical and confessional explanations.

    Read more about The Elephant in the Archive

  • Rethinking colonialism through early modern global diplomacy: A tale of Pampangan mobility

    2024. Birgit Tremml-Werner. Journal of Global History 19 (1), 18-36

    Article

    This study is an intervention in early modern global diplomacy. Integrating an indigenous community of the Philippines into foreign relations and maritime connections, the article reevaluates the complex story of the Pampangans of Luzon, allegedly long-term allies of the Spanish conquerors, and the narrative of indigenous collaboration. Foregrounding the Pampangans’ involvement in military campaigns, as well as territorial and maritime expansion in the early decades of the 1600s, the article introduces three scenarios of Pampangan power bargaining with global consequences. The focus on Pampangan foreign relations opens new analytical perspectives on the role of language and knowledge for internal coloniality on the one hand, foreign and diplomatic negotiations on the other. Methodologically, it proposes a deep (re-)reading of the polyvocal archive of the colonial-indigenous encounter and integrates insights with the largely separated scholarship of diplomatic and indigenous history as a new avenue in global history.

    Read more about Rethinking colonialism through early modern global diplomacy

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