Abby Gibbons

Abby Gibbons focuses on the history of crime and violence in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Germany and the German-speaking lands. Her dissertation investigates violence between known associates, friends, and families in Augsburg, Nördlingen, and the county of Oettingen. She seeks to understand the intersections between space, networks, and violence. She centrally asks where violence occurred within a community and how far it spread into the community through communal networks. Spaces are created through human interaction in particular places and are not static. Her dissertation considers questions of spatial and relational visibility, particularly as it pertains to the people involved in court cases. Furthermore, she uses digital tools for mapping and social network analysis to understand the relationship between spaces and people, and individuals and the community. She contends that cases of violence between people who know each other became known to the greater community through witness networks.