The time from the end of the 15th century until the beginning of the 19th century has been described as the early modern period for approximately forty years. It is understood and investigated as its own epoch. The early modern period encompasses the secular transformational processes that developed out of the medieval world and continued into the modern 19th and 20th centuries.
These transformations were of a fundamental nature. They affected the forms of societalisation and group formation as well as the economy, the arrangement of knowledge and the political organisation of society. This transformation of premodern societies can be traced back to a variety of topics. Our research interests currently focus on the Reformation and confessionalisation; the emergence of the modern state; the expansion of Europe into the rest of the world and the rise of capitalism; the "invention" of modern science and the secularisation of world views; the transformation and disciplining of behaviour; and the development of new forms of social communication and group formation.
The historiography of the early modern period was and is an experimental field for newer methodological approaches. Gender history, the perspective of the history of perception and experience as well as microhistory all have their place in research and teaching. Research of early modern times always involves a close methodological exchange with neighbouring cultural studies fields. It addresses questions and methods of anthropology, reflects theory developments in the social sciences and takes up conceptual reorientations in the literary sciences. The research in Konstanz is therefore interdisciplinary and strongly orientates itself towards media and communication theory.