Franz AJ Szabo
Dr. Franz A.J. Szabo - Department of History, Classics, and Religious Studies
Franz A.J. Szabo is Professor Emeritus of Austrian and Habsburg History at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, where he was also Director of the Wirth Institute for Austrian and Central European Studies from 1998 to 2011.
He has published widely in Europe and in North America on the subject of Habsburg enlightened absolutism, and is the author of Kaunitz and Enlightened Absolutism, 1753-1780 published by Cambridge University Press in 1994, which won both the Barbara Jelavich Prize of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies in 1995, and the Austrian Cultural Institute Prize for best book in Austrian Studies in 1996. His most recent book, The Seven Years War in Europe, 1756-1763, published in 2008, is part of the Longman "Wars in Perspective" series. He was also the winner of the Carleton University Faculty of Arts Teaching Award, where he taught for 12 years before taking up his new position in Alberta in September 1998.
From 1994 to 1996 he was Director of the Austrian Immigration to Canada Research Project, which brought out A History of the Austrian Migration to Canada and Austrian Immigration to Canada: Selected Essays, both with Carleton University Press in 1996. Other edited and co-edited books include Staatskanzler Wenzel Anton von Kaunitz-Rietberg, 1711-1794: Neue Perspektiven zu Politik und Kultur der europäischen Aufklärung (1996); Politics and Culture in the Age of Joseph II (2005); The Germans and the East (2008); Embodiments of Power: Building Baroque Cities in Europe (2008); the catalogue Legacy of Empire: Treasures of the University of Alberta's Central European Library Collection (2009); Diversity and Dissent: Negotiating Religious Difference in Central Europe, 1500-1800 (2011); and Eastern Christians in the Habsburg Monarchy (2021). Franz Szabo has also had an ongoing interest in art and music history, into which he takes an occasional scholarly foray. He has lectured widely on art historical, musical and other cultural topics, including at the National Gallery of Canada, the Art Gallery of Ontario, and the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal.
Franz Szabo has been honoured by the Austrian federal government with the Eherenkreuz für Wisenschaft und Kunst, 1. Klasse (1999) and with the Grosse Silberne Ehrenzeichen für Verdienste um die Republik Österreich (2009), by the Austrian Canadian Council with its Medal of Merit in Gold (2005), by the Czech government with its Medal of Merit, of the Czech Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports (2014), and by his native Austrian province of Styria with the Grosses Ehrenzeichen des Landes Steiermark (2014).
Email: fszabo@ualberta.ca
Website: https://www.ualberta.ca/history-classics/people/emeriti/szabo.html