Daniela Hacke

Daniela Hacke is a Full Professor of Early Modern History at the Free University of Berlin, where she holds the chair for History of the Early Modern Period within the Department of History and Cultural Studies at the Friedrich Meinecke Institute. Previously, she held a Professorship for the History of Western Europe in the Early Modern Period at LMU Munich from 2012 to 2015. Her academic journey spans five universities across three countries (Hamburg/Bologna, Cambridge/Oxford, Zurich), earning degrees from Germany, England, and Switzerland.

Professor Hacke specializes in the cultural history of the early modern world, with research interests spanning gender history, sensory history, transcultural encounters, and religious history. Her work combines methodological approaches from historical anthropology, gender studies, and sensory studies to explore how cultural encounters shaped identities and power relations. She has particular expertise in the history of emotions, sensory practices in colonial contexts, and the political dimensions of religious coexistence.

Her research output reveals a clear trajectory from early work on gender and marriage in Counter-Reformation Venice toward broader explorations of sensory history and transcultural encounters. Recent publications focus on how the five senses structured colonial relationships, with particular attention to early American contexts. She approaches historical analysis through interdisciplinary lenses, frequently collaborating with scholars in emotion studies, anthropology, and literary studies.

• Book of note (Center for Sensory Studies) for Empire of the Senses: Sensory Practices of Colonialism in Early America

Professor Hacke actively supervises graduate students and leads several major research initiatives, including the EU COST project People in Motion: Entangled Histories of Displacement across the Mediterranean (1492-1923), the Network of Early Modern Senses (NEMoS), and the DHC Netzwerk 'Dingwissen.' Her teaching portfolio includes undergraduate and graduate courses on gender, the Peasants' War, and sensory history in the early modern period. She also co-founded and edits entries for the 'Sinnesforschung, historisch' section of the Enzyklopädie der Neuzeit Online.