William O'Reilly

William O'Reilly is Associate Professor in Early Modern History at the University of Cambridge and Leibniz Honorary Professor at the German National Maritime Museum. His research examines migration, colonialism, and imperialism, with special focus on German-speaking Europe and the Habsburg territories.

He completed his education at the University of Oxford (MSt, DPhil) and University College Galway (BA). His academic appointments include Research Fellowship at Cambridge's Centre for History & Economics, visiting positions in Budapest, Vienna, Hamburg, and Harvard, and Full-time Fellowship at the Institute of Advanced Study, Budapest.

Research areas include:

• Migration patterns (1400-1815)
• Habsburg-Ottoman borderlands
• Atlantic colonial networks
• Central European urban development
• Comparative imperial systems

Recent publications analyze Catalan political economy within Habsburg systems, millenarian communication networks, and behavioral approaches to historical migration. His scholarship connects regional case studies with global historical frameworks.

He teaches undergraduate courses on European history, material culture, borderlands, and Central European cities, while supervising graduate research on early modern European and Atlantic topics. As Steering Group Member of the Centre for Global Human Movement, he facilitates interdisciplinary migration studies.