On 12 March 2025, Posthumus fellow Jan Dumoulyn, Professor of History at Ghent University, will deliver the inaugural lecture for the Chaire Francqui 2024-2025 at the University of Namur. The lecture will be titled ‘Een canon, een verhaal en de kritiek – La vulgarisation de l’histoire “nationale” en Belgique et en Flandre’ [‘A canon, a story, and the critique – The vulgarisation of national history in Belgium and in Flanders’].
The Francqui Chair, existing since 1933, is one of the cornerstone initiatives of the Foundation Francqui. This Chair encourages the collaboration and exchanges between (mostly Belgian) Universities. This, in turn, enriches academic environments, advances academic excellence and interdisciplinary research, and also contributes to strengthen the different universities’ reputations. The inaugural lesson of such a cycle is usually the opportunity to bring together all the personalities of the discipline concerned.
The inaugural lecture forms the start of a series of lectures by Professor Dumoulyn at the University of Namur on the theme ‘Histoire urbaine et tensions sociales – Les Pays-Bas méridionaux avant 1302’ [‘Urban history and social tensions – The Southern Netherlands before 1302’]:
Thursday 10 April 2025, 08:30-10:30 – Le XIIIe siècle, période clé de l’histoire urbaine des Pays-Bas méridionaux [‘The 13th century, key period to the urban history of the Southern Netherlands’] (link not available yet)
To attend the inaugural lecture and the reception afterwards it will be required to register before 1 March 2025 via Florence Pierre of the University of Namur.
For info on attending the lectures, please visit the webpage of the lecture involved.
In April, the course ‘Quantative Methods for Historians and Social Scientists’ of the N.W. Posthumus Institute will start at Utrecht University. Although the final deadline for registration was set on 15 March 2025, the number of participants for this course has already reached its maximum. Registrations between now and the deadline of 15 March will be placed on a waiting list in order of registration date, however first prioritising (Research) Master students over PhD students.
On Monday 17 February 2025 the Department of International Economics at Radboud University will host Dr Maanik Nath (Utrecht University) for a lecture entitled ‘Drivers of Agricultural Growth in British India’ in the departmental seminar lecture series.
All those interested are welcome to join the seminar. For more info you may contact Dr Vincent Delabastita.
Linked to the combined research team of slavery projects at the International Institute of Social History (Amsterdam) and Radboud University (Nijmegen), researcher of both institutions jointly organise a hybrid seminar series ‘Micro-Global Histories of Slavery: Sources and Approaches’.
As a global turn in slavery studies urges us to bring together the study of histories of slavery from across the globe, from Asia to the Atlantic, from local regimes of slavery to the impact of colonial slave trade and slavery, this seminar aims to further critical reflections of sources and approaches for the study micro-global histories of slavery.
The organisers invite scholars to share insights, questions and ideas that are grounded in research practice and experiences with colonial and other or vernacular sources. Discussing sources, research practices and methodologies thus serves as a way to further develop the practice of micro-global histories of slavery.
If you would like to be present at a seminar, or present in it, please contact Dr Sanne Muurling for more information.
Confirmed dates and speakers
(please note that time and locations vary! Updated: 20 February 2025)
18 February 2025, 11:00 CET, IISH (Amsterdam)
Titas Chakraborty (Duke Kunshan University) – Studying enslaved mobilities in Asia
5 March 2025, 15:00 CET,
Radboud University (Nijmegen)
Timo McGregor (Leiden University) – Navigating Court Records and Legal Pluralism in Colonial Contexts
2 April 2025, 15:00 CET, IISH (Amsterdam)
Meenu Mathai and Susan Thomas (Sree Sankaracharya University of Sanskrit) – (Un)Making the Aṭima in Malabar/Kerala: Sources from the Syrian Christian Church Grantavari
14 May 2025, 15:00 CET, Radboud University (Nijmegen)
Claude Chevaleyre (CNRS / Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies) and Koen van der Lijn (Leiden University) – Contracted into slavery? Coerced labour in early modern China
4 June 2025, time TBA, IISH (Amsterdam)
speaker and title TBA
2 July 2025, 15:00 CET, Radboud University (Nijmegen)
Wouter Raaijmakers (Radboud University) – Living in an Empire of Laws: Between Legislation and Litigation in the Indian Ocean World
On 19 March 2025, Posthumus alumna Ramona Negrón will defend the PhD thesis ‘Dutch Entrepreneurship in the Spanish Americas, 1580-1700’ at Leiden University. Supervisors are Professor Cátia Antunes (Leiden University) and Dr Susana Münch Miranda (Universidade Nova de Lisboa).
Ramona’s dissertation shows that Dutch entrepreneurs, notably Amsterdam’s influential Coymans family, played a crucial role in the Spanish Americas from 1580 to 1700. In an era of dramatic geopolitical shifts — like the Eighty Years’ War (1568-1648) and the Fall of Antwerp (1585) — Dutch merchants turned Amsterdam into a center of world trade. They broke through barriers designed to keep them out of Spanish colonial markets by using clever tactics like innovative financing, strategic partnerships, and flexible shipping methods. Drawing on a rich collection of notarial records, personal documents, and court files from the Netherlands, Spain, the Caribbean, and Latin America, the study reveals how trust and reputation were built across vast distances and diverse legal systems. Ultimately, this research challenges traditional, empire-centered interpretations of trade by revealing that early modern trade thrived on dynamic, interconnected networks that transcended rigid imperial boundaries.
The Fryske Akademy, the Mercator European Research Centre on Multilingualism and Language Learning, the Professorship Multilingualism and Literacy of NHL Stenden University of Applied Sciences, the department of Frisian Studies of the University of Groningen, and the department Language, Technology and Culture of UG/Campus Fryslân have announced the Third Conference on Frisian Humanities. This year’s theme will be ‘Bridges and Boundaries: Fryslân in a Global Context’. Plenary speakers will be (all confirmed) Professor Alderik Blom (Philipps-Universität Marburg), Professor Marguérite Corporaal (Radboud University), Professor Peter Gilles (Université du Luxembourg), and Dr Caterina Sugranyes, Universitat Ramón Llull, Barcelona (Spain).
Proposals submission deadline passed 16 March 2025.
The Institute of Medieval Studies (FCSH; Nova University, Lisbon) and the City Council of Castelo de Vide will host the X International Conference on the Middle Ages which will be held from 2nd to 4th October 2025 under the theme ‘Memory in medieval urban Europe’. With a focus on Christian, Islamic and Jewish Europe, researchers from any scientific discipline (e.g., History, Archaeology, History of the Art, Literature) are invited to present proposals for sessions and/or individual presentations.
Proposals for papers and/or panels should be submitted ultimately 30 April 2025. Please note a conference fee applies. Working languages of the Conference are: Portuguese, Spanish, French, and English.
On 14 February 2025, Posthumus alumnus Jasper Segerink (cohort 2020) successfully defended his thesis ‘The Lodging House and the City. Accommodating Migrants in Urban Space, Antwerp, 1850-1914’ to obtain his PhD from the University of Antwerp at the Felixarchief in Antwerp.
Jaspers dissertation studies the lodging house sector and its relation to changes in migration and urbanisation in Antwerp during the late nineteenth century (ca. 1850-1914). Although omnipresent in the historical cityscape, the lodging house features only scarcely in the works of historians. This dissertation aims to fill in this gap by treating the lodging house is treated both as an expression of these transition – and thus a peculiar historical phenomenon meriting an understanding of its own internal mechanisms – and a lens on them, a key site to investigate how such transformations reverberated in the lives of ordinary people. With this goal in mind, this thesis adopts an approach that is fundamentally spatial and relational across scales. This method is applied through novel digital tools like GIS-mapping and building biographies, to a broad variety of sources ranging from police documents, legislative texts, population and lodging registers, newspapers, and historical novels and imagery.
The N.W. Posthumus Institute staff congratulates Jasper with obtaining his PhD!
The jury of the KHMW Brouwer Vertrouwensprijs [KHMW Brouwer Trust Award] has awarded the Brouwer Vertrouwensprijs 2025 to the knowledge platform CollectieveKracht, initiated by Posthumus fellow Tine De Moor, Professor Social Enterprises and Institutions for Collective Action at the research group Business-Society Management at the Rotterdam School of Management.
CollectieveKracht is the knowledge exchange platform for citizens’ collectives. CollectieveKracht aims to put citizens’ collectives of all kinds – from energy to housing and from care to food – on the map and support those initiatives by mutually connecting citizens’ collectives and experts, online (via webinars and lectures) as well as on-site (with events throughout the country). CollectieveKracht makes scientific knowledge available to citizens’ collectives and submits societal issues to experts affiliated with the platform: academics, policy makers, and funding agencies; the experts’ findings subsequently are shared via the platform. All activities by CollectieveKracht are independent, free, and accessible. At this moment, 232 citizens’ collectives and 167 experts are connected to the platform.
The jury of the Brouwer Vertrouwensprijs was impressed by the many activities of the platform, the professionalism of the organisation, and the academic embeddedness of their activities. The N.W. Posthumus Institute congratulates Tine and her team with this award!
De bijeenkomst van 4 februari 2025 vervangt de origineel voor 14 november 2024 geplande workshop die in verband met de landelijke actiedag tegen de bezuinigingen op hoger onderwijs was uitgesteld.
~ because of scope in Dutch only ~
In het licht van de groeiende maatschappelijke belangstelling voor inkomensongelijkheid en de verdeling van winsten, organiseert het NEHA een workshop die deze urgente thema’s onder de loep neemt. Deze workshop is bedoeld om verschillende perspectieven te verkennen en inzichten te delen over inkomensongelijkheid en winstverdeling, zowel op nationaal als internationaal niveau. Ook de rol van banken in deze kwesties komt uitgebreid aan bod.
De workshop is er op gericht traditionele academische grenzen te overstijgen door een breed scala aan maatschappelijke partijen te betrekken bij het debat over economische ongelijkheid middels het delen van expertise en het bevorderen van de dialoog tussen diverse belanghebbenden. Drie van de vijf sprekers komen vanuit de academische wereld (onder wie Posthumus-alumnus Amaury de Vicq), de andere twee vanuit het maatschappelijke veld. De verschillende sprekers zullen elk verschillende aspecten van economische ongelijkheid belichten.
