Biographie

Vitus Huber is professor of early modern history at the University of Fribourg. Prior to joining the History Department, he was an Ambizione-fellow of the Swiss National Science Foundation at the University of Geneva and an associated fellow at the University of Oxford. He is the author of two books on the so-called conquest of the Americas: The first, Beute und Conquista: Die politische Ökonomie der Eroberung Neuspaniens (Campus 2018), derives from his dissertation at the University of Munich and analyzes the political economy underpinning the Conquista of New Spain. His second monograph, Die Konquistadoren: Cortés, Pizarro und die Eroberung Amerikas (C. H. Beck 2019), provides a synthesis on the conquistadors. Additionally, he has published on themes including the history of the body, the night, autobiographic writing, and self-optimization. He is currently working on a book on early modern practices of self-observation and self-improvement.

Huber’s research has been supported by multiple grants, and he has held (visiting) fellowships and/or lectureships at Universidad Pablo de Olavide (Seville), CSIC (Madrid), El Colegio de México (Mexico City), the John Carter Brown Library (Providence), Harvard University, the University of Bern, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (Paris), Università degli Studi di Padova, and Oriel College as well as the University of Oxford. He studied History and German Literature and Linguistics in Bern and Valencia, Spain.

Huber welcomes the opportunity to supervise theses on the early modern period, with particular interest in topics related to colonial history, the history of the body, night, Iberian entangled history (Conquista), and egodocuments (autobiographical sources).