Roberto Zaugg

Assistant Professor at the University of Zurich (project director & co-coordinator of the network)

Sub-Project: Trade and Material Cultures of Red Coral between the Mediterranean and Atlantic Africa

After studying at the University of Florence and gaining a PhD at the University of Naples “Federico II”, Roberto Zaugg has worked at the University of Basel, Sciences Po (Paris), the University of Lausanne and the University of Bern, before joining the University of Zurich in 2019. In his PhD thesis he has examined the condition of foreigners in eighteenth-century Naples. This has led him to engage with the history of judicial institutions, Mediterranean merchant diasporas, diplomatic relations, as well as the history of citizenship rights and migrations. In his post-doc years, he has extended the focus of his research to autobiographical writings, the slave trade, the cultural history of colonialism and – from a geographical point of view – to the German-speaking territories, the Atlantic world and West Africa. He has co-edited the manuscript journal of barber-surgeon Johann Peter Oettinger (1682-1696), which relates the author’s extended journeyman migration through the Holy Roman Empire and the Dutch Republic as well as his two trans-Atlantic voyages aboard Dutch and Brandenburg slave ships. More recently, he has reoriented his scholarly interests from German-Atlantic to Italian-Atlantic entanglements in the early modern era, building a research group as well as the Atlantic Italies Network.  

More information about Roberto Zaugg and his research group at the University of Zurich

Comprehensive publication list

Download publications by Roberto Zaugg on academia.edu