My doctoral thesis (2025) explores the social, economic and environmental history of the Southern and Eastern Carpathians (fourteenth-seventeenth centuries) - a mountain chain building the Westernmost border region of the Great Eurasian Steppe. It examines the factors that influenced the traffic-related and military role of these mountains (Carpates traversées), as well as the economic importance of their natural resources (Carpates vécues). These factors are of political, geopolitical, economic, social, as well as climatic and cultural nature, so that the history of the Southern and Eastern Carpathians is presented not only through the lens of the neighboring countries but also from a transregional perspective. The control and dominion over the mountain passes were largely influenced by the development of the trade routes connecting Central Europe with the Black Sea in the Late Middle Ages. From the mid-sixteenth century, the social and economic changes that occurred following the Ottoman conquest increased the regional and supraregional significance of the mountains’ resources (forests and pastures) and the degree of their exploitation. Analyzing traffic, forest use, pig and sheep husbandry as well as the evolution of a linear border, the thesis shows the interconnectedness of the mountains with its Eastern and Western neighbors.

This project examines the methods, purposes, networks, institutional frameworks, and effects of military and economic intelligence conducted by various institutions and individuals from the Habsburg Monarchy in the Northern Balkans in the long nineteenth century. Whereas existing scholarship has emphasized the activities of the Evidenzbüro – the military intelligence service of the Monarchy – , this study expands the scope to include other institutions and individual actors. Particular attention is paid to the interconnections between intelligence and various local authorities and institutions, such as the police, gendarmerie, envoys, consuls, and military attachés. By reconstructing intelligence networks, the project seeks to shed light on the complex relations between Habsburg agents and the local populations of the Northern Balkans. Beyond its contribution to Southeastern European history, the project situates its findings within a broader European, Eurasian and global context. It asks how the new international order after the Napoleonic Wars and the Ottoman decline shaped intelligence operations and what role colonial thought and practice played in information gathering in the Balkans.