Leif Hammer
DPhil Student - Magdalen College
Research Topic: Reconstructing eighteenth-century scholarly mentalities: a comparative study of the University of Oxford and the University of Copenhagen
Supervisors: Professor Avi Lifschitz & Professor Laurence Brockliss
About my work
My main research area is eighteenth-century university history. My interests range from the Enlightenment (in England, Scotland, and Denmark-Norway) to vagrancy and with trials in early modern Scandinavia.
My main research area is eighteenth-century university history, though my interests range from vagrancy in early modern Norway to witch trials and the Enlightenment.
My doctoral work (begun in 2021) is a cultural history of scholarly communities at the universities of Oxford and Copenhagen, c. 1714-1820. I seek to compare and discuss how the similar and different factors and contexts, internal and external, affected the scholarly communities' cultures and vice versa. By doing so, I explore how eighteenth-century scholarly identities were created and performed, constructed, and perceived, and how they tied in with global networks of learning, such as the republic of letters.
I am funded by the Aker Scholarship Foundation.
Activities
I have attended the History of Knowledge Doctoral Summer School at Lund University (worth 5 ECTS) in August 2024.
I am one of the co-founders and co-convenors of the Oxford Scandinavian Studies Network, an interdisciplinary forum open to anyone working on or interested in Scandinavia. Our goal is to strengthen interest in Scandinavia as a region and to promote exciting new scholarship.
Member of the Eighteenth-Century Research Forum (Copenhagen University).
Publications
Book Review of “ÖSTLING Kunskapens stora hus: Huvudlinjer i universitetets historia”, English Historical Review (2025)
“Knebukser, «Doctorhabit» og David Hume: en reise på 1700-tallet via København”, Historikeren 1 (2025), 6-10 [magazine article]
Conference & seminar papers
“The Body in the University: Scholars Suffering in Eighteenth-Century England and Denmark” (BSECS 54th Annual Conference, Oxford, January 2025)
"Academic Culture in a Town Square" (GRACEH 2024 – The 18th Annual Graduate Conference in European History, Florence, Italy, 15 April 2024)
"Fearful and Armed? Eighteenth-Century Student Culture in Denmark" (Magdalen College Convivium, Oxford, 2 February 2024)
"The King of Denmark-Norway at Oxford University: from Institutional Self-Fashioning to the Perceptions of Scholarly Outsiders" (BSECS 53rd Annual Conference, Oxford, 3-5 January 2024)
"'Terror' and 'Devotion': Emotional Experiences at the University of Copenhagen, 1770-1773" (History of Education Society, Annual Conference, Sheffield, 17-19 November 2023)
'"Decline" and the Cultural History of the Eighteenth-century University' (Graduate Seminar in History, 1680-1850, Lincoln College, Oxford, 24 January 2023)
Other research interests:
Ludvig Holberg (1684-1754)
early modern Scandinavia, esp. Denmark-Norway
early modern British Isles, esp. England
Enlightenment culture, networks, and literature
early modern learned people and networks
history of universities
history of knowledge
cultural history, esp. mentalités
history of emotions
Previous degrees:
MLitt in Early Modern History (Distinction), University of St Andrews
BA in History, NTNU the Norwegian University of Science and Technology
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