Supervisory Research Areas:

Early Modern British and European History (1450-1800), especially the Reformation on the continent and in the British Isles, Political Thought, Legal History c. 1450-1850, Early Modern Economic History

Personal Statement:

I am happy to supervise postgraduate students with an interest in any of my subject areas, and would be delighted to advise on suitable research topics. I have experience in working with the media, schools, and other partner institutions in the public and private sector, and am interested in developing further networks and collaborations.

Positions Held:

Dr Pörtner studied General and Medieval History, Economic History, and German in Oxford and Bochum. After gaining a First Class with Distinction for her Joint Honours MA from Bochum University she was elected to a Rhodes Scholarship at Oxford University, where she completed her D.Phil. in 1998. Before joining the History department at Swansea University as a Lecturer in September 2005 she was a Research Fellow at the German Historical Institute in London and Lecturer in History at Bochum University. Dr Pörtner was promoted to Senior Lecturer in 2010.

Current Research:

Dr Pörtner is currently preparing a book-length comparative study of European nobilities and legal reform in Enlightenment Europe. She is also co-editing a conference volume on the history and legacy of Civil Wars (s. further Research Publications for details). Dr Pörtner is a Council member and Trustee of the Society for Renaissance Studies, and a member of Swansea’s Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Research (MEMO) as well as the James Callaghan Centre for the Study of Conflict.

Principal publications

Books

• The Counter-Reformation in Central Europe: Styria, 1580-1630 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001)
• Research on British History in the Federal Republic of Germany, 1998-2000 (London: German Historical Institute, 2002)
• 'The highest of time’: Verfassungskrise und politische Theorie in England, 1640-1660 (Constitutional crisis and political thought in England, 1640-1660), Historische Forschungen Bd. 90, (Berlin: Duncker und Humblot 2009, also available as E-book)

Book-chapters and journal articles

• 'Gegenreformation und ständischer Legalismus in Innerösterreich, 1564-1628', Zeitschrift für Historische Forschung 4, 2000, 499-542
• 'Confessionalization and Ethnicity: The Slovenian Reformation and Counter-Reformation in the C16th and C17th', Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte / Archive for Reformation History, 93 (2002), 233-279
• 'A. G. Dickens and the Continental Reformation', in R. Ambler & G. Burgess, eds., ‘Reformulating the Reformation’, Historical Research, 77.1 (2004), special issue, 59-78
• 'De crimine magiae: Das Verbrechen der Zauberei im theresianischen Strafrecht', Jahrbuch der Zeitschrift des historischen Vereins für Steiermark, 94 (2004), 149-159
• 'Propaganda, Conspiracy, Persecution: Prussian Influences on Habsburg Religious Policies from Leopold I to Joseph II', in M. Scheutz, W. Schmale & D. Štefanová, eds., 'Orte des Wissens', Jahrbuch der Österreichischen Gesellschaft zur Erforschung des achtzehnten Jahrhunderts, 18-19 (2004), 457-476
• 'Die Kunst des Lügens: Ketzerverfolgung und geheimprotestantische Überlebensstrategien im theresianischen Österreich', in J. Burkhardt & C. Werkstetter, eds.,  Kommunikation und Medien in der Frühen Neuzeit, Historische Zeitschrift Beiheft 41 (2005), 385-408
• 'Die Gegenreformation in der Steiermark (Inneroesterreich)', in R. Leeb, S. C. Pils, & T. Winkelbauer, eds., Gegenreformation und Geheimprotestantismus in der Habsburgermonarchie, (Vienna: Instituts für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung, 2006), 376-385
• 'Impeachment', in: F. Jäger (Hg.), Enzyklopädie der Neuzeit, Bd. 5 (Stuttgart: Metzler, 2007), 801-803
• 'Migration und Herrschaftsverdichtung: Ökonomische Voraussetzungen konfessionell bedingter Untertanenmobilität in den Ländern der Habsburgermonarchie, 1680-1780', in: Bahlcke, Joachim (ed.), Glaubensflüchtlinge. Ursachen, Formen und Auswirkungen konfessioneller Migration im frühneuzeitlichen Europa, (Religions- und Kulturgeschichte Ostmittel- und Südosteuropas Bd. 4), (Münster: Lit-Verlag, 2008), 345-371
• 'Policing the subject: Confessional absolutism and communal autonomy in eighteenth-century Austria', in: Austrian History Yearbook, vol. 40 (2009), 71-84
• 'Reichspolitik, Reform und bischöfliche Autonomie: Der Investiturstreit im Spiegel der Gesta Treverorum', Mediaevistik, vol. 22 2009 (2010), 83-116
• 'Defending the Catholic enterprise: National sentiment, ethnic tensions, and the Jesuit mission in seventeenth-century Hungary', in: Balázs Trencsényi, Márton Zászkaliczky (eds.), Whose love of which country? Composite States, National Histories and Patriotic Discourses in Early Modern East Central Europe (Studies in Political Thought vol 3., ed. Terence Ball, Jörn Leonhard, Wyger Velema, Brill: Leiden 2010), 569-586
• 'Ständeversammlungen', in: Enzyklopädie der Neuzeit, hg. von Friedrich Jäger, Bd. 12 (Stuttgart - Weimar: Metzler, 2011), 911-915
• 'Heresy and literacy in the eighteenth-century Habsburg Monarchy', in: Howard Louthan, Gary Cohen, Franz Szabo (eds.), Diversity and Dissent: Negotiating  Religious Difference in Central Europe 1500-1800 (Austrian and Habsburg Studies vol. 11, Berghahn: New York - Oxford 2011), 173-192
• 'Politik, Religion und konfessionelle Kultur in Innerösterreich', in: Sönke Lorenz, Anton Schindling, Wilfried Setzler (eds.), Primus Truber. Der slowenische  Reformator in Württemberg, Stuttgart 2011, 303-314
• 'Mission, Nation und Mäzenatentum in Ungarn, 1561-1712', in: Joachim Bahlcke, Thomas Winkelbauer (eds.), Schulstiftungen und Studienfinanzierung.  Bildungsmäzenatentum im Spannungsfeld von Konfession, Landespatriotismus und frühmodernem Nationsgedanken in den böhmischen, österreichischen und  ungarischen Ländern, 1500-1800, MIÖG, Vienna 2011, 317-327

Recent conference papers and invited lectures:

‘Conversion and Confessionalization’, Cambridge University, 14 September 2010

Principal research awards, fellowships, and prizes

• Helmut Coing Prize, Max Planck Institute for European Legal History, Frankfurt, 2008-9
• German Historical Institute London, conference support grant, 2009
• British Academy Small Research Grant, , 2007-8 
• Duke-Ernest Research Fellowship, Fritz-Thyssen Foundation 2004
• Visiting Fellowship, Geisteswissenschaftliches Zentrum für Geschichte und Kultur Ostmitteleuropas, Leipzig, June 1999
• Research Fellowship, Institute for European History, Mainz, 1995-6
• Austrian Exchange Service reseacrh grant, 1994
• Rhodes Scholarship, 1991-3
• German History Prize, Faculty of Modern History, Oxford, 1992