Institute of History
Topic
A Selected Aspect of Early Modern Criminal History
PhD. program
Slovak History
Year of admission
2026
Name of the supervisor
Blanka Szeghyová, PhD.
Contact:
Receiving school
Faculty of Arts, Comenius University Bratislava
Annotation
The aim of the doctoral dissertation is to examine the functioning of judicial practice in the early modern period as a space in which legal norms, moral concepts, and social strategies intersected. The research should focus on a clearly defined chronological framework, while the doctoral candidate may choose to work within a regional or urban setting, or to concentrate on a specific offence or group of offences (such as moral offences, violent crime, defamation, etc.), or on gender-specific forms of criminality.
Crime should be analysed not only as a violation of legal norms, but also as a social and cultural phenomenon closely connected to contemporary notions of honour, morality, order, and justice. Particular emphasis may be placed on the analysis of the strategies employed by the actors of judicial proceedings—judges, defendants, plaintiffs, and witnesses—and on the ways in which they mobilised legal norms, moral and religious arguments, and local customs. Attention may also be paid to differentiated patterns of punishment depending on social status, gender, social capital, and mitigating or aggravating circumstances.
Further possible areas of research include the comparison of secular and ecclesiastical approaches to the adjudication of offences; the implementation of legal reforms in judicial practice, particularly with regard to religious and moral offences following the adoption of Joseph II’s criminal code; and processes of criminalisation and decriminalisation of selected offences.
The dissertation will be based on a systematic analysis of archival sources combined with a critical reading of relevant domestic and international scholarship. The precise thematic and chronological scope of the research will depend on the state of preservation, content, and extent of the available sources.
Requirements: a good command of the languages of the archival sources (typically Latin, German, or Hungarian) and proficiency in Slovak/Czech or English at a minimum level of B2.
Crime should be analysed not only as a violation of legal norms, but also as a social and cultural phenomenon closely connected to contemporary notions of honour, morality, order, and justice. Particular emphasis may be placed on the analysis of the strategies employed by the actors of judicial proceedings—judges, defendants, plaintiffs, and witnesses—and on the ways in which they mobilised legal norms, moral and religious arguments, and local customs. Attention may also be paid to differentiated patterns of punishment depending on social status, gender, social capital, and mitigating or aggravating circumstances.
Further possible areas of research include the comparison of secular and ecclesiastical approaches to the adjudication of offences; the implementation of legal reforms in judicial practice, particularly with regard to religious and moral offences following the adoption of Joseph II’s criminal code; and processes of criminalisation and decriminalisation of selected offences.
The dissertation will be based on a systematic analysis of archival sources combined with a critical reading of relevant domestic and international scholarship. The precise thematic and chronological scope of the research will depend on the state of preservation, content, and extent of the available sources.
Requirements: a good command of the languages of the archival sources (typically Latin, German, or Hungarian) and proficiency in Slovak/Czech or English at a minimum level of B2.