Elena Russo
DPhil Student - New College
Research Topic: Rethinking Nineteenth-Century Adriatic Identity Through Spaces: an Alternative to Nation-States Analysis
My project analyses the Adriatic territories (1836–1866), namely Dalmatia, Istria, and the Venetian region, under the Habsburg Empire. Aligned with theoretical approaches developed by Mediterranean historians, my thesis aims to rethink our idea of the nineteenth-century Adriatic by centring the sea. I reinterpret this region as one of connectivity, where newly developed steamship routes shaped daily lives and social-cultural dynamics. Starting from the founding of the first steamship company, the Austrian Lloyd, in 1836, to the reconfiguration of the Adriatic post-1866, this dissertation centres mobility above political rupture. I propose that the Adriatic was not merely a site of division but a shared space that fostered interactions between people living across its shores. In my thesis, I examine everyday mobility, taking readers on a journey and showing them how the Adriatic Habsburg Space was created, lived and regulated.
Supervisor: Robert Evans and William Whyte
