Dr. Sophia Mösch
Vita
Since 2021, Sophia Mösch has been a research associate at the Käte Hamburger Kolleg ‘Legal Unity and Pluralism’ at the University of Münster. In 2020–2021, she was a visiting fellow at the University of Padua as part of the Talent@UniPD initiative, and in 2018–2019 she held a Swiss National Science Foundation Early Postdoc.Mobility Fellowship at the University of Oxford. From 2015 to 2018 she taught International History as a guest teacher at the London School of Economics and, from 2015 to 2017, Medieval History, International Relations, and Memory Studies at King’s College London, where she also completed her PhD in History in 2015 as an SNF Doc.Mobility Fellow.
She studied History as well as German and English Literature at the University of Basel, with study visits to Cape Town and Freiburg i. Br., graduating with a licentiate degree in 2010.
Research Project
Developing Principles of Good Governance: Political Advice during the Carolingian, Macedonian and Seljuk Reforms
Alcuin of York’s and Nizam al-Mulk’s engagement with contrasts between opposing states of social order that call for opposing sovereign virtues suggests that there are links between Western and Eastern political advice texts both at the level of content and language. My project Developing Principles of Good Governance: Political Advice during the Carolingian, Macedonian and Seljuk Reforms reaches beyond disciplinary research traditions, traditional periodisation and distinctions between East and West. It explores political advice and mirrors for princes as interdisciplinary analytical frameworks and culturally reflective tools in the transmission of texts and ideas. On the one hand, the comparison reveals continuities and discontinuities in the principles of governance proposed to the Carolingian, Macedonian and Seljuk rulers by their political advisers. On the other hand, it juxtaposes Macedonian and Carolingian notions of spiritual and institutional justice with the circle of justice.
Publications
Moesch, Sophia: Cultural Contact and Spiritual Transformation. Unveiling Blurred Boundaries between ‘Pagan’ and ‘Christian’ through Virgil’s ‘Georgica’, Augustine’s ‘De Civitate Dei’, and Alcuin’s ‘Versus de Patribus Regibus et Sanctis Euboricensis Ecclesiae’, in: Christian Scholl (Hrsg.): Kulturkontakt zur Zeit der Völkerwanderung. Koexistenz, Verflechtung oder „Clash of Cultures“? Religion und Politik, [in preparation]
Figueiredo, João/ Lieb, Claudia/ Ludwig, Ulrike/ Moesch, Sophia/ Oestmann, Peter/ Seebröker, Benjamin (Hrsg.): Münsteraner Glossar zu Einheit und Vielfalt im Recht, 4. Ausgabe/Münster Glossary on Legal Unity and Pluralism, 4th Edition (EViR Working Paper 11), Münster 2024.
Moesch, Sophia: Dispute Settlement (Premodern Europe), in: Figueiredo/ Lieb/ Ludwig/ Moesch/ Oestmann/ Seebröker (Hrsg.): Münster Glossary on Legal Unity and Pluralism, 4th Edition, 31–33.
Moesch, Sophia: Justice. The Biblical-Christian Elements of Iustitia, in:Figueiredo/ Lieb/ Ludwig/ Moesch/ Oestmann/ Seebröker (Hrsg.): Münster Glossary on Legal Unity and Pluralism, 4th Edition, 73–74.
Moesch, Sophia: Two Ninth-Century Ecclesiastical Initiatives to Legally Define Religious and Secular Duties. Photios I of Constantinople’s Εἰσαγωγὴ τοῦ νόμου and Hincmar of Reims’s Collectio de Ecclesiis et Capellis (EViR Working Paper 2), Münster 2022.
Moesch, Sophia: Augustine and the Art of Ruling in the Carolingian Imperial Period. Political Discourse in Alcuin of York and Hincmar of Rheims, Abingdon/New York 2019.
Moesch, Sophia: Augustinian Thought in Alcuin’s Writing. A Philological-Historical Approach, in: History of Political Thought (HPT) 39/1 (2018), 33–53.
Moesch, Sophia: Les Annales Mettenses Priores et Alcuin d’York. Le discours politique sur l’accession de Charlemagne au pouvoir, in: Presses universitaires de Nancy – Editions Universitaires de Lorraine (Ed.): Charlemagne, les Carolingiens et Metz. Représentation, recomposition et instrumentalisation du passé du Moyen Âge au XXe s., Nancy 2018, 65–81.
Moesch, Sophia: What NANSO Posters from Cape Town Reveal, in: Miescher, Giorgio/ Rizzo, Lorena/ Silvester, Jeremy (Ed.): Posters in Action. Visuality in the Making of an African Nation, Basel 2009, 75–86.
Moesch, Sophia/ Verein Frauen-Stadtrundgang Basel/ Zentrum für Afrikastudien Basel: Stadtsafari – Afrika in Basel = Africa in Basel – an Urban Safari, Basel 2008.
Moesch, Sophia/ Basler Afrika Bibliographien: „Plakate im Kampf“. Bilder und Öffentlichkeit der Befreiungsgeschichte Namibias = “Posters in the Struggle”. Images and Audiences in the History of Namibia’s Liberation, Basel 2006.