Florian Dirks

Visiting Researcher, Trinity Centre for Environmental Humanities, TCD

Florian Dirks is a historian of European Medieval History. He worked extensively about socio-cultural and legal questions towards the phenomenon of the feud in Northern Europe and about connections between Northern German towns of the Hansa and the noble people of the surrounding territories. Lately he was part of the research team at the German Maritime Museum Bremerhaven, where he was involved in research on hanseatic trade with cod in the 14th-17th centuries. Florian particularly enjoys historical topics which complete the expertise of other historians or archaeologists.

Author of a study on Carolingian rituals in conflicts (2010), he published his Phd dissertation under the title 'Konfliktaustragung im norddeutschen Raum des 14. und 15. Jahrhunderts. Untersuchungen zu Fehdewesen und Tagfahrt', Göttingen 2015 (Nova Mediaevalia, 14); Reisende Spezialisten in der Region. Die Lüneburger Ratssendeboten und die Beilegung von Konflikten auf Tagfahrten im 15. Jahrhundert, in: Lüneburger Blätter 35 (2016), pp. 129-144 (Travelling specialists in the region. Lueneburg's envoys and the settlement of conflicts on meetings in the 15th century), and more recently, a paper about aspects and actors of urban security in the Late Middle Ages (Ausreiten, schützen, verhandeln. Aspekte und Akteure städtischer Sicherheit im Spätmittelalter am Beispiel Bremens, Braunschweigs und Lüneburgs, in: Rudolf Holbach (ed.), Vorderfflik twistringhe unde twydracht. Städtische Konflikte im späten Mittelalter, Oldenburg 2017, pp. 85-96). He also writes reviews for major periodicals on (Medieval) history, and gives talks at international conferences.

In the NorFish Project, Florian's focus is on Hansa towns' activities in the fish trade of Northern Europe. He provides the research group with import data on fish and commodities which came into towns of the Hanseatic League to push further the comprehension of the Fish Revolution.