Lena Oetzel is a historian specialized in the early modern period. In her current research she analyzes early modern peace congresses as particular spheres of early modern diplomacy, the peace congress of Westphalia (1643–1649) in particular. She delves into the question why peace-making is so difficult, thereby combining New Diplomatic History and Historical Peace Research. Furthermore, she is interested in early modern communication and gender relations, with a regional focus on the Holy Roman Empire as well as England, as well as in historiography, academic life-writing and science communication.
Lena studied history, philosophy and political sciences in Bonn, Germany and St Andrews, Scotland. For her PhD thesis on “Talking about Rule. Criticism of Elizabeth I of England (1558–1603)” she went to the University of Salzburg. Since then, she has been Post Doc at the University of Salzburg, Erwin Schrödinger fellow at the Center for Historical Peace Research at Bonn University (2014–2016) and Elise Richter fellow at the Institute for Habsburg and Balkan Studies at the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna (2020–2022).