Jens Aurich (junior researcher at the IISH), Koen van der Lijn (Johan Huizinga Fellow at Rijksmuseum Amsterdam) and Fresco Sam-Sin (founder and creative lead of the Things That Talk Foundation), both connected to the Contract Labourers and Collective Action project at IISG, organise the seminar ‘Sources, silence and the senses in the study of the…

At the Posthumus Conference 2025 in Nijmegen, the PhD students present who completed the Posthumus PhD Basic Training Programme received their diploma during the Conference Dinner. The N.W. Posthumus Institute congratulates these PhDs and also those who completed the programme but were not at the conference, with successfully completing the PhD Basic Training Programme! As…

From 16 until 21 June 2025, seven Posthumus PhD candidates gathered in Berne Abbey in Heeswijk-Dinther for the annual Writing Retreat of the N.W. Posthumus Institute. This five-day retreat offers students the opportunity to work on their dissertation or paper in progress with 8-10 of your colleagues in a quiet place, away from all the…

At the end of this academic year, Professor Ulbe Bosma (IISH) will complete his task in the coordinating team of the Posthumus Research Network ‘Roots and Routes in Colonial and Global History’. Ulbe was one of the founders and initiators of this network and has managed, in close cooperation with his fellow coordinators, to create…

On 27 June 2025, the Network for Environmental Humanities (NEH) celebrates the pioneering, socially engaged research being conducted by our junior scholars in the humanities with the Symposium ‘Bracing for imapct: Junior scholars on the Anthropocene’. The topics relate various issues related to the Anthropocene – the overlapping climate, environmental and biodiversity crises. The NEH…

On 11 September 2025, Posthumus alumnus Dániel Moerman will defend the PhD thesis ‘A hydrosocial history of drought and societal resilience in the cities of Deventer and Zutphen, 1500-1900’ at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Supervisors are Professor Petra van Dam (VU Amsterdam), Dr Milja van Tielhof (Huygens Institute), and Dr Bob Pierik (VU Amsterdam). The…

The Dutch Research Council (NWO) has awarded several fellows of the N.W. Posthumus Institute an NWO XS Grant. This grant is awarded for ideas with a maximum budget of 50,000 euro that hold great promise and aim to enable proposals for curiosity-driven, innovative research in the research fields covered by the NWO Domain Social Sciences…

Posthumus Fellow emeritus Professor Peer Vries and Annelieke Vries-Baaijens recently published their book The rise of the modern state in Europe, 1450-1914. Whereas the current world consists of states with their own, demarcated, usually contiguous territory, and recognised authority, in the Late Middle Ages legitimacy of government authority was not based on institutionalised participation by…

Recently, Leuven University Press has issued a new edition of TSEG – The Low Countries Journal of Social and Economic History, the Dutch-Flemish academic journal on social and economic history. The latest edition contains a lot of interesting articles, some authored by Posthumus fellows, among which an article by Reinder Klinkhamer on the response of…

On 23 June 2025, Posthumus alumna Robin Rose Southard successfully defended the PhD thesis ‘Biting the hand that feeds: contesting the food guilds in 18th-century Brussels’ at Vrije Universiteit Brussel. Supervisor was Professor Wouter Ryckbosch (Vrije Universiteit Brussel). The N.W. Posthumus staff congratulates Robin Rose with obtaining the PhD!