Ulrike Strasser

Ulrike Strasser is a Professor of History at the University of California, San Diego. She specializes in early modern global history, gender studies, and religious missions, with a focus on Jesuit activities and colonial encounters in the Pacific. Her research explores intersections of masculinity, religion, and colonialism, as well as the entanglements between European Enlightenment thought and indigenous knowledge systems.

Education includes previous appointments at the University of California, Irvine, and UCLA as a Clark Professor. Her work has been recognized with the 2021 SSEMWG Book Award and numerous fellowships from institutions like Harvard Divinity School and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.

Research interests include: missionary masculinity, global religious networks, colonial history of the Pacific Islands, and the role of indigenous knowledge in shaping European scientific thought. Current projects involve a co-authored monograph on Enlightenment, Jesuits, and indigenous worlds with Prof. Dr. Renate Dürr of Universität Tübingen, under contract with Oxford University Press.

• Awards: 2021 SSEMWG Book Award, DAAD Fellowship, Humboldt Foundation Grant
• Key Publications: State of Virginity (2004), Missionary Men in the Early Modern World (2020)

Her edited series Entanglements, Interactions, and Economies in the Early Modern World emphasizes global interconnectedness from 1400–1800, examining topics like trans-regional trade, missionary cartography, and diasporic communities.