PhD Student Thomas Roth

 

The collective cultivation of agricultural land as commons was a central aspect of economic activity in medieval communities. Especially the members of rural communities depended on the use of the commons to compensate for crop failures and to generate sellable surpluses.

During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, there was a significant increase in the regulation and privatization of common land by both ecclesiastical and secular rulers. These new restrictions of use had serious negative effects on the economic situation of urban and especially rural communities. Accordingly, demands for the abolition of decreed restrictions of use became a key aspect of the insurgents' agenda during the peasant unrests of the 15th and 16th centuries. In the relevant historical research, however, there is usually no profound discussion of these demands concerning the collective use of farmland and natural resources. Instead, these demands are merely classified as fragments of an ideologically coherent overall agenda of the respective insurgents.

These programmatic narratives are not able to reflect the heterogeneity and the observable developmental tendencies of the demands concerning the administration and use of the commons articulated by the insurgents. In particular, these research narratives obscure the distinct differences between the demands of the insurgents in terms of their radicality, the legitimation strategies underlying these demands, and the forms of communication used in the discourse between the insurgents and the authorities.

The analysis of usage conflicts that emerged during the peasant unrests of the 14th and 15th centuries therefore requires a shift away from the dominant research. Therefore the goal of this research project is to break away from these narratives through a specific examination of the communicative, argumentative and substantive interactions between peasant demands and the reactions of the authorities triggered by them. Therefore, this research project will take an interdisciplinary approach, incorporating not only the relevant historical research but also the insights of the performance research and the social movement research.

Research Interests

  • Geschichte sozialer Bewegungen
  • Spätmittelalterliche und frühneuzeitliche Bauernunruhen
  • Performanz und Ritualforschung
  • Agrar- und Umweltgeschichte des Mittelalters und der Frühen Neuzeit

Seit Mai 2021:

Promotionsstudent an der Technischen Universität Darmstadt im Fachbereich Mittelalterliche Geschichte

Promotionsstipendiat der Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes (seit Januar 2022)

2018 bis 2021:

Masterstudium Geschichte an der TU- Darmstadt mit dem Studienschwerpunkt Geschichte der Vormoderne. (Titel der Abschlussarbeit: : „Nutzungskonflikte im Wandel: Allmendforderungen im Rahmen von Bauernunruhen im 15. und 16. Jahrhundert.“)

Parallel zum Masterstudium Tätigkeit als studentische Hilfskraft für Prof. Dr. Gerrit J. Schenk im Fachbereich Mittelalterliche Geschichte (Juni 2018 bis März 2020) und Absolvierung eines Praktikums im Geschichtslektorat der Wissenschaftlichen Buchgesellschaft (wbg) im August und September 2019.

2014 bis 2018:

Joint-Bachelor-Studium Geschichte und Politikwissenschaft an der TU Darmstadt (Titel der Abschlussarbeit: „Canossa als Wendepunkt für die rituelle Gestaltung mittelalterlicher Papst-Kaiser-Treffen?“)

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