The mini series within the Royal Studies Podcast on Monarchy & Money is hosted by Charlotte Backerra from the University of Klagenfurt in Austria, and Cathleen Sarti from the University of Oxford in the UK. In these Monarchy & Money episodes, they are talking with scholars on why economic questions are important to understand monarchical rule, and how royals are interacting with the economies of their kingdoms and beyond their territories. They are also always happy to hear about research into economic, financial, and business activities of monarchies and dynastic rulers of all kind.

Guest Bio:

Veronika Hyden-Hanscho holds the prestigious Elise-Richter Fellowship awarded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF). The topic of her current project is “Income, Management and Economic Thinking. Noble Entrepreneurship in the Eighteenth-Century Habsburg Monarchy” and focuses on the Habsburg aristocracy as a driving force for economic development. She is Assistant Professor at the University of Klagenfurt. In 2011, she earned a PhD at the University of Graz (Austria). She was Lecturer for Austrian Studies at the University of Wrocław (Poland) and Research Associate at the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna from 2013 to 2023 as well as visiting scholar at the University of Ghent (Belgium). She is the author of ‘Reisende, Migranten, Kulturmanager. Mittlerpersönlichkeiten zwischen Frankreich und dem Wiener Hof (1630–1730)’ (Stuttgart, 2013) and co-editor of ‘Formative Modernities in the Early Modern Atlantic and Beyond. Identities, Polities and Glocal Economies’ (Singapore 2023).

The mini series within the Royal Studies Podcast on Monarchy & Money is hosted by Charlotte Backerra from the University of Klagenfurt in Austria, and Cathleen Sarti from the University of Oxford in the UK. In these Monarchy & Money episodes, they are talking with scholars on why economic questions are important to understand monarchical rule, and how royals are interacting with the economies of their kingdoms and beyond their territories. They are also always happy to hear about research into economic, financial, and business activities of monarchies and dynastic rulers of all kind.

Guest Bio:

Katia Wright completed her PhD at the University of Winchester in 2022 with her thesis regarding five English queens across the fourteenth century as landowners, and more specifically their dower lands. Katia has worked on several joint projects and publications including co-editing a special edition of the Royal Studies Journal and her chapter on understanding the dowers of England’s medieval queens. She is part of the project on the Examining the Resources and Revenues of Royal Women in Premodern Europe (also known as the Queen's Resources). Katia is also the Assistant Curator (Archives) of the AGC Museum, Winchester.

In this episode, host Ellie Woodacre interviews the editor of the cluster ‘Diplomacy as Performative Politics in the Early Modern Courts’, as featured in the December 2025 issue of the Royal Studies Journal (issue 12.2). We discuss the inspiration behind this theme and delve into the contents of the cluster and its original and innovative approach to early modern diplomacy, rulership and courts.

Guest Bio/Info:

Dr Kristen Vitale Engel is an early modern historian who specializes in the early Tudor state, performative politics, and late medieval and early modern European court culture. She successfully defended her doctoral dissertation (thesis), titled “Henrician Spectacle: Courtly Festivity as Performative Politics in Early Tudor England, 1485-1533” in April 2025 at the University of Connecticut. She is a Visiting Assistant Professor of History in the School of Graduate, Online and Continuing Education at Fitchburg State University. Kristen is the Submissions Editor for the Royal Studies Journal, the Editor-in-Chief of “The Court Observer” for the Society of Court Studies, the International Ambassador (US) for HistoryLab+ in partnership with the Institute of Historical Research, a podcast host for the “Early Modern History” channel on the New Books Network, and an Associate Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

Forthcoming publication of interest: “The Performance of Power Relations: Early Henrician Courtly Dance,” in eds., Janet Dickinson and Diana Lucia Gomez-Chacon, The Embodied Court in the Premodern World; Understanding the Physicality, Performativity and Lifecycle of Bodies at Court in Europe and Beyond, 1400-1800, in series Courts and Courtiers in a Global Context Comparative Approaches to the Study of the Mechanisms and Personalities of Pre-Modern Court Cultures, vol. 4, Brepols, 2026.

Follow Kristen on X: @kristenmvitale