Katharina Schmees studied English and History at the University of Oldenburg and Newcastle University (UK). After completing her studies, she completed her preparatory service for secondary school teaching in Oldenburg (Vechta branch) in 2013 and returned to the University of Oldenburg as a lecturer and doctoral candidate in 2014.
From 2017 to 2020, Schmees was employed as a research assistant in the externally funded project FliF - Forschungsbasierte Lehre im Fokus. Until the end of 2021, she was a research assistant in the international joint projectIntoxicating Spaces. The Impact of New Intoxicants in Public Spaces, Consumption, and Sociability in North Western Europe (c. 1600 - c. 1850). Since January 2022, she has been involved in the project participate@UOL (Strengthening Participation in Studies and Teaching through Digital and Hybrid Formats) , which is funded by the Foundation Innovation in University Teaching.

Research focus:
Gender history, history of emotions, stigma research

In her dissertation, she uses funeral orations, prayer books, trial records, epitaphs and autobiographical texts to analyse how female childlessness was interpreted and processed in the 17th and 18th centuries. The focus is on the stigmatisation of childless women and their emotional management.

Project outline for dissertation: Childless women in the early modern period

Publication:

Schmees, Katharina: Revolution in Oldenburg? The year 1848 in the memory of two contemporaries, in: Freist, Dagmar (ed.): ArchivGeschichten. Festschrift for Gerd Steinwascher. With the collaboration of Johannes Birk and Wolfgang Henninger. With 9 illustrations, Stuttgart 2018, pp. 84-97.

Lectures:

07.12.2021
Martyr and monster? On the stigmatisation of childless women in the 18th century.
Participation in the colloquium of the Chair of Early Modern History and Gender History at the Ruhr University Bochum

03.09.2021
"I am a mother without children". On the renegotiation of femininity and motherhood in Rahel Varnhagen's letters
Lecture as part of the interdisciplinary online workshop ""ihr wist ich kenne die Welt und meine dass in Ernst" - Rahel Levin Varnhagen (neu) lesen", Goethe University Frankfurt

26.10.2019
"Naht die Stund der Mitternacht/ Steigt sie aus dem Grabe sacht" - Wenn Wöchnerinnen wiedergehen
Lecture on the topic of "Transitions" on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the Arbeitskreis Geschlechtergeschichte der Frühen Neuzeit in Stuttgart