Sabine Jesner
Sabine Jesner is an early modern historian. She studied history and law at the University of Graz. In 2013 she received her doctorate in the field of the Southeast European History. Her doctoral thesis examined the Habsburg border policy in the Transylvanian Military Border, where she focused on defence and plague prevention strategies. Before moving to the Institute of Military History / Museum of Military History in 2024, she worked as a project head (PI) and senior lecturer at the Department of Southeast European History and Anthropology (SEEHA) at the University of Graz. Sabine Jesner is a military and medical historian with a strong interest in socio-cultural dynamics. Her research follows historical-anthropological approaches and includes gender-specific perspectives. A geographical focus lies on Transylvania and the Banat.
Areas of Research
- Civil and military welfare and public health
- Early modern »medical spaces«
- History of epidemics and quarantine
- Habsburg Military Border
- Cultural history of the military administration and officialdom
- Wartime captivity as part of the history of ethics and diplomacy
CuRrent Research
The Habsburg Health Systems project discusses aspects of military welfare that developed based on the state health policy which became firmly established in the 18th century. The geographical focus is on the Ottoman Wars, placing the provinces in the south-east of the Habsburg Monarchy at the geographical center. On the other hand, a temporal restriction is imposed by the selection of case studies, which are limited to the 18th century. These are the three Ottoman wars in the years 1716-1718, 1736-1739, and 1788-1792. Habsburg Health Systems examines the structural and ideational framework conditions of how military medicine was organized and perceived in the 18th century. This takes place against the backdrop of a solidifying state-building process, which included »medicine« and »health« as an important pillar of this new »statehood«.
Recent Publications
Sabine Jesner, Fighting War Pestilence: Habsburg Strategies of Disease Management during the Ottoman War (1737-39), in: Tryntje Helfferich, Howard Louthan (eds.), Beyond the Battlefield: Reconsidering Warfare in Early Modern Europe, London: Routledge 2023, 228-243.
Sabine Jesner, Recruiting and Networking Strategies: The Functional Elite in the Banat of Temeswar (1716-1751/53), in: Judit Pál, Vlad Popovici, Oana Sorescu-Iudean (eds.), Elites, Groups, Networks: Collective Actors in Central and Southeast Europe from the 18th to mid-20th Centuries, Central and Eastern Europe Series, Leiden/Boston: Brill 2022, 31-56. DOI: https://doi.org/10.30965/9783657795215_003
Sabine Jesner, Clerks, guards and physicians: Imperial staff and the implementation of border security concepts within the Transylvanian Military Border, in: Jovan Pesalj, Leo Lucassen, Annemarie Steidl and Josef Ehmer (eds.), Borders and Mobility Control in and between Empires and Nation-States, Studies in Global Migration History / Studies in Global Social History, Leiden/Boston: Brill 2022, 115-141. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004520844_006
Sabine Jesner, Habsburg border quarantines until 1837: an epidemiological ‘iron curtain’?, in: Sevasti Trubeta, Christian Promitzer, Paul Weindling (eds.), Medicalising borders. Selection, containment and quarantine since 1800, Manchester: Manchester University Press 2021, 31-55. DOI: https://doi.org/10.7765/9781526154675.00009