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Staff Profiles

Dr Gaby Mahlberg

Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow

Background

I am a historian and journalist with a special interest in the intellectual and cultural history of the English Civil War and its legacy in the British Isles and Europe. I completed my BA, MA and PhD at the University of East Anglia in Norwich working with J.C. Davis and Mark Knights (now Warwick) for my thesis on the republican thinker Henry Neville (1619-1694).

My first monograph, based on my PhD work, was published as Henry Neville and English Republican Culture in the Seventeenth Century: Dreaming of Another Game (Manchester: MUP, 2009). My most recent book looks at The English Republican Exiles in Europe during the Restoration (Cambridge: CUP, 2020). I am currently working on a new project on 'English Republican Ideas and Translation Networks in Early Modern Germany, c1640-1848'.

Before joining Newcastle University as a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellow in December 2020, I taught at the UEA, Queen Mary and Goldsmiths (both University of London), Potsdam University and Humboldt University (Berlin) in Germany and, most recently, across the road at Northumbria University, where I was a (Senior) Lecturer from 2011 to 2015.

I have also worked for various German media, including dpa International, the Catholic News Agency KNA, and the Network for Reporting on Eastern Europe n-ost, where I was responsible for the eurotopics press review.

Between April 2015 and November 2020, I worked as an editor for the German Press Agency dpa in Berlin. Since December 2021 I have been working part-time for dpa in the UK.

Twitter: @TheHistoryWoman

Blog: https://thehistorywoman.com 



Research

Current Research:

'English Republican Ideas and Translation Networks in Early Modern Germany, c1640-1848'

This project explores the significance of translations for the transmission of seventeenth-century English republican ideas in the German-speaking lands before the Revolution of 1848-9. German political thinkers at the time looked at the constitutional models of their European neighbours for inspiration as the territories formerly ruled by the Holy Roman emperors struggled against outdated feudal structures and strove for national identity and unity. The project aims to gather a body of material that gives us an insight into the distribution, dissemination and reception of English republican works in Germany in a variety of languages, including English, Dutch, French and Latin as well as German to understand the way in which ideas travelled between countries in the form of print. Combining the history of political thought and the history of the book in innovative ways and taking inspiration from translation studies and social network theory, this project will focus on the way works were translated, edited and rewritten for new contexts and audiences - in this case German society from the later seventeenth century to the Vormärz.

Employing Peter Burke's analytical concept of 'cultural translation', the figure of the translator will be assigned a key role both as the reader and first recipient of a work as well as an independent agent able to shape the text in a new language for a new purpose. Particular attention will also be paid to the relationship between translators, editors and political circles. Challenging a largely anglocentric and transatlantic historiography, this transnational and multi-lingual project thus aims to establish the intellectual reach and legacy of the first English Revolution of 1640-60 on the European Continent by focusing on the country that from 1701 had developed an ever closer relationship with England through the Succession Act which established the Hanoverian dynasty on the English throne.

The Marie Sklodowska Curie Actions website for my project can be accessed here.

 

 

Publications