… a Chinese PhD student will be our guest!

Jiayu Dang, born in 1996, studied History at Northwest University (2014-2018) and obtained his Bachelor’s degree. Then he studied Medieval History at Northeast Normal University (2018-2021). The master thesis topic was the royal succession in the late ninth century Western Frankish Kingdom. Since September 2021, he has started his doctoral studies at Jinan University. From December 2023 to November 2024, he will study in the Department of History at the University of Cologne as a visiting student supervised by Prof. Dr. Karl Ubl.

His doctoral project involves the leges and Capitularies in the Carolingian age. The Carolingian dynasty marked a significant stage in the evolution of leges, which played a crucial role in governing the kingdom’s territory and uniting the community’s identity. Furthermore, they helped Frankish rulers conquer other kingdoms or regions by respecting the tradition of leges and the autonomy of privileges to gain the submission of the conquered. Thus, the Carolingian rulers’ promulgation and revision of leges were not solely intended for judicial purposes but also served as crucial tools for managing vast territories and fulfilling their symbolic function.
By analyzing the legislative reforms of Charlemagne and Louis the Pious, Jiayu Dang’s project aims to explore how they reshaped the legal framework and royal judicial authority through legislative reforms and integrated newly conquered ethnic groups and regions into the empire’s governance system.