Past events

A state so oddly constituted? The Sejm and the political culture of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, 1569--1795

Tuesday, November 13, 2012, at 7:00pm

Prof. Robert Frost's lecture: A state so oddly constituted? The Sejm and the political culture of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, 1569--1795'

Professor Frost was educated at St Andrews University, the Jagiellonian University, Kraków, and the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University of London, where he wrote his doctorate under the supervision of Professor Norman Davies. He was appointed to a chair in Early Modern History and as Head of School for Divinity, History and Philosophy in September 2004. He joined the University from King's College, London, where he was Reader in Early Modern History and Head of the History Department. His main interests lie in the history of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, in particular from c 1550 to c 1725. He is also interested in the history of warfare in northern and eastern Europe form the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, the Thirty Years War and the history of Sweden. In his work on Poland-Lithuania he has a particular interest in the Polish-Lithuanian monarchy under the Vasa dynasty (1587-1668) and in noble society and culture.

His first book, After the Deluge: Poland-Lithuania and the Second Northern War (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1993) is a study of the political impact on Poland-Lithuania of the series of wars which engulfed it after the great Cossack rebellion of 1648-54.He has also published The Northern Wars: War State and Society in Northeastern Europe, 1558 - 1721 (Longmans, Harlow, 2000), which won the 2005 Early Slavic Studies Association Distinguished Scholarship Award.

In 2009 Professor Frost stood down as Head of School, and was awarded a British Academy/Wolfson Foundation Research Chair for 2009-12, to complete a history of the Polish-Lithuanian Union, 1386-1815 for Oxford University Press.

He teaches early modern European history and courses on the Military Revolution, the Thirty Years War (1618-1648) and on the nobilities of Europe in the early modern period. He is willing to undertake doctoral supervision on any aspect of early modern Polish-Lithuanian history, on military history of the early modern period, on the Thirty Years War and on Swedish history between 1523 and 1718.

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