On 26 March 2026, Posthumus alumna Rosa Kösters will defend the thesis ‘How to Self-Organise? Insight from Workers at Albert Heijn (Ahold) and Unox (Unilever) in the Netherlands, 1960–2020’ at Leiden University. Supervisors are Professor Leo Lucassen (Leiden University & International Institute for Social History) and Professor Matthias van Rossum (Radboud University). In her dissertation,…

On 25 February 2026, Posthumus alumnus Junhao Cao sucessfully defended the PhD thesis ‘Property Rights and Agricultural Growth in Northwestern Europe, 1300-1800’ at Utrecht University. Supervisors were Professor Bas van Bavel and Dr Jessica Dijman (both Utrecht University). Junhao Cao’s research seeks to explain the agricultural growth in the Low Countries and England over the…

On 15 April 2026, the Stichting Nederland-Sri Lanka in collaboration with the Research Network ‘Routes and Roots in Colonial and Global History’ of the N.W. Posthumus Institute will organise a book launch event for Lives, Land, and Labour. A Social History of Eighteenth-Century Sri Lanka (Leiden: Brill, 2026), authored by Posthumus fellow Luc Bulten. The…

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 (photo), head of the Medieval History Research Group at KU Leuven. The N.W. Posthumus Institute (as secretariat of the…

The International Institute of Social History (IISH), in cooperation with the École normale supérieure de Lyon (ENS Lyon), welcomes paper and session proposals for the 16th edition of the European Social Science History Conference (ESSHC 2027), to be held at ENS Lyon on 21-24 April 2027. The aim of the ESSHC is bringing together scholars…

The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) has launched a call for applications for the KNAW Trailblazers Fund. The purpose of the Fund is to support early-career first-generation academics (PhD candidates in the final 2 years, assistant professors without a permanent position, and postdoc researchers within the first three years after their promotion)…

The Department of Architecture (Faculty of Engineering Sciences, Heverlee Campus, KU Leuven) has vacancies for two postdoctoral researchers (36 months) for the ERC-funded project ‘URBAN-DELTA: Metropolises in the Mud. Innovation in Delta Building Technology in Europe and China before 1800’, directed by Professor Merlijn Hurx. URBAN-DELTA hypothesises that major advances in the history of water-related…

After two successful previous editions, the N.W. Posthumus Institute will once more offer the Posthumus Summer School on ‘Crises and History’ on 6-10 July 2026. Crises are not a new phenomenon: past societies also faced them. How these societies coped with crises, or why they failed to do so, is a topic that increasingly draws…

Professor Pepijn Brandon, fellow and also subsitute member of the General Board of the N.W. Posthumus Institute, recently was awarded, together with three other researchers a Synergy Grant of 10 million euros to investigate these questions within the TASTADE (The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade and the Development of Europe) project by the European Research Council (ERC)….

The Executive Board of Leiden University has appointed Dr Alicia Schrikker, fellow of the N.W. Posthumus Institute, as Professor of Dutch History in the World, effective 1 January 2026. The chair is based at the Institute of History (Faculty of Humanities). Alicia Schrikker is Director of Research at the Leiden University Institute for History. She…