Dr. Sara Mehlmer
Personal Details:
Born in 1985 in Mainz; 2006-2013: studied History, German and Spanish in Mainz and Valencia (Spain); 2013: qualified as a secondary school teacher; 2011-2012: worked as a travel guide writer; 2013-2014: assistant at Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich and teacher of German as a foreign language; 2014-2019 doctoral researcher at the Leibniz Institute of European History (IEG) in Mainz in the Emmy Noether Research Group "Battles over Belief: Religion and Violence in Catholic Europe, 1848-1914".
Research Interests:
History of modern Spain
Catholicism and Spanish nationalism
Interreligious contacts in Northern Africa (19th century)
Islam and Judaism in Spanish history
Microhistory and biographical history
Historical border studies
Publications (selection)
Mehlmer, Sara, 'Um Streitigkeiten zu vermeiden, […] wird jene Moschee zerstört'. Religion und Gewalt im Grenzkonflikt bei Melilla, 1860–1863, in: Eveline Bouwers (Hg.), Glaubenskämpfe. Katholiken und Gewalt im 19. Jahrhundert, Göttingen: V&R 2019, S. 141–162.
Mehlmer, Sara, Spain and its North-African 'Other' in the 19th Century. Ambivalent Practices of Comparing in the Context of Modern Spanish Colonialism, in: Eleonora Rohland u.a. (Hg.), Contact, Conquest, and Colonization: How Practices of Comparing Shaped Empires and Colonialism Around the World, New York: Routledge 2021, S. 132–151.
Research projects:
Battles over Belief: Religion and Violence in Catholic Europe, 1848–1914
The Emmy Noether research group undertakes the first systematic analysis of the use of protest and violence in conflicts pertaining to religious culture and Church power in late-nineteenth-century and early-twentieth-century Europe. It studies the motives and legitimation strategies for the use of crowd action and simultaneously probes opportunities to overcome physical conflict and the development of alternative ways to overcome conflict.
Between Brothers and Archenemies. Christian and Muslim border crossings in and around Spanish-Northern Africa, ca. 1851–1869
The dissertation project examined forms of border crossing between Morocco and Spain in the border area around Spanish North Africa (Ceuta and Melilla) in the second half of the 19th century (ca. 1851-1869). The work focused on the role of physical and psychological violence as well as religious, ethno-national and social affiliations.