On 26 to 28 October 2026 the 2026 edition of the ESTER Research Design Course (RDC) will be held. This year’s edition will be hosted by the KU Leuven under the guidance of Maïka De Keyzer, head of the Medieval History Research Group at KU Leuven. The N.W. Posthumus Institute (as secretariat of the ESTER Network) and the local organizers of KU Leuven welcome the PhDs of cohort 2025 for this RDC.

The Research Design Course is a format promoted by ESTER (The European graduate School for Training in Economic and Social Historical Research, a European platform for postgraduate teaching involving over 60 universities throughout Europe) since the late 1990s. The RDC assists candidates in setting up a high quality and well-designed plan for their dissertation under the guidance of a team of senior researchers and research design specialists whose task it is to provide comments and feedback. Thus, the RDC is not a “course” in which an instructor will give a lecture or that you will discuss historical theories in a seminar setting. Instead, it is focused on presentations of individual projects and the ensuing discussions on how to improve them.