Credit: Humboldt Foundation/Jörg Scheibe
Prof Ulinka Rublack FBA is a cultural historian at Cambridge University and Fellow of St John´s College.
Ulinka extensively collaborates with film-makers and costume-designers, composers and museums. Her work has been translated into six languages, and she has most recently been awarded the German Historikerpreis for her achievements.
This website introduces you to her collaborations on the history of witchcraft, fashion and the material culture of the Renaissance to date.
The Astronomer and the Witch
The Astronomer & the Witch tells the story of how the famous astronomer Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) and his family responded to the accusation that their mother Katharina was a witch. In Anglo-American fiction on this trial, Katharina has consistently been portrayed as a witch-like woman. Rublack´s book overturns this account. Her re-appraisal of Katharina´s life has inspired an opera as well as a film. To download the opera´s vocal score for free and find out more about the opera project click here: http://www.keplers-trial.com
VIDEO: Film director Michael Hoffman talks about his interest in Astronomer & the Witch by Ulinka Rublack
In January 2018, The Astronomer and the Witch attracted the interest of acclaimed film director Michael Hoffman and his production company Sympathetic Ink. Hoffman worked together with Roland Walthers to write a film script closely based on the book and intense discussions with Ulinka. In the video, Hoffman provides insights into this creative collaboration between Cambridge historians and film-makers.
The First Book of Fashion
VIDEO: The First Book of Fashion, University of Cambridge
In 2000, Ulinka began research which resulted in her prizewinning 2010 Oxford University Press monograph Dressing Up: Cultural Identity in Renaissance Europe. Chapter 2 presents the first in-depth analysis in English of a unique historical document, a book of 137 water-colour images which a man called Matthäus Schwarz (1497-1574), head-accountant of the Fugger merchant firm in sixteenth-century Augsburg, compiled to depict himself dressed from his infancy to old age. This First Book of Fashion provides an unparalleled record of Renaissance male dress and it cultural meanings.
Clothes made history, and history can be about clothes
Ulinka's research on dress led to a re-creation of an entire outfit worn by Schwarz as well as to the recreation of one of his feather head-dresses. The videos tell the story of these projects and her collaboration with the School of Historical Dress in London between 2013-19.
VIDEO: When real men wore feathers, University of Cambridge
A Young Man's Progress
The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge
24 March – 6 September 2015
VIDEO: A Young Man's Progress, University of Cambridge
Ulinka´s work also led to collaboration with artist Maisie Broadhead to create contemporary fashion and photography in response to Renaissance dress. The result was exhibited in museums in the UK and Germany.
Treasured Posessions: From Renaissance To Enlightenment
The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge
24 March – 6 September 2015
VIDEO: Treasured Posessions: from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment, University of Cambridge
Between 2011-15, Ulinka co-curated the Fitzwilliam Museum exhibition Treasured Possessions. It presented a dazzling journey through the decorative arts: from the hand-crafted luxuries of the Renaissance to the first stirrings of mass commerce in the Enlightenment.
Featuring some 300 stunning objects, each revealing the tastes and hopes of its owners and the skills of the hands that made them, the show gave a closer look into how Europeans shopped and brought novelties into their lives and their homes, conducting a dazzling visual adventure through the decorative arts.
To hear Ulinka Rublack discuss some of her work see
The Thirty Years War (BBC Radio 4)
Johannes Kepler (BBC Radio 4)
Breaking Free - Martin Luther's Revolution (BBC Radio 3)
Fashion: The accountant who created the first book of fashion (BBC News)
When real men wore feathers (University of Cambridge)
The Historiker-prize (Historisches Kolleg, Munich)
Albrecht Dürer (BBC Radio 4)
Please find contact details at Ulinka´s website at the Cambridge History Faculty