To celebrate the release of the Royal Studies Journal special issue 'Defining Aristocracy' (issue 11.1: June 2024), we have two roundtable episodes with the guest editor, Cathleen Sarti, and her contributors--one in English and another in German: a first for our podcast! This episode is the German version, hosted by Erik Liebscher and featuring Cathleen Sarti, Nadir Weber and Marion Dotter. You can find out more about all of the participants in this episode in the guest bios below.

Cathleen Sarti: Cathleen Sarti is Departmental Lecturer for History of War at the University of Oxford. She holds a Phd from the University of Mainz which has been published as Deposing Monarchs: Domestic Conflict and State Formation, 1500-1700 with Routledge in 2022. She often works with Charlotte Backerra from the University of Göttingen on Monarchy & Money: the research seminar, several publications, and a book series with AUP. The research is connected to Examining the Resources and Revenues of Royal Women in Premodern Europe. Cathleen is currently working a book on War Materials in European Warfare from the Baltic and the Economic Agency of Danish Queens.

Marion Dotter: Marion Dotter is a research assistant at the Collegium Carolinum in Munich, Germany. From 2018 to 2021, she wrote her dissertation on Noble Politics in the late Habsburg Monarchy as part of the research project The Desk of the Emperor. Her research interest in Habsburg administrative practice led to the publication of the anthology "Allerunterthänigst unterfertigte Bitte. Bittschriften und Petitionen im langen 19. Jahrhundert". She is currently working on a study on the relationship between the Catholic Church and Communism in East-Central and South-East Europe in the Second Half of the 20th century.

Nadir Weber: Nadir Weber is Professor of Early Modern Swiss History at the University of Bern and is currently leading the SNF Eccellenza project Republican Secrets: Silence, Memory, and Collective Rule in the Early Modern Period. He completed his PhD in Bern on the Principality of Neuchâtel and its political relations with Prussia. He then explored the history of hunting and human-animal relations, particularly at court, in various publications including a recent article on the concept of aristocracy in the political language of the early modern period.

Erik Liebscher: Erik Liebscher's work focusses on personal testimonies, the lower nobility, societies and sociability in the 18th century. He holds a PhD from the University of Erfurt (2024) which analyzed diaries of the Gotha court nobility around 1800. Since May 2024, he has been a research assistant at the Chair of Early Modern History at the University of Leipzig.