Wieke Metzlar, member of the 2024 PhD cohort of the N.W. Posthumus Institute, has won the Volkskrant-IISG History Thesis Award. The Volkskrant-IISG Thesis Award is annually awarded to the best history-related Master’s thesis in the Netherlands. In the Master’s thesis, Wieke researched causes for excessive mortality rates in girls compared to boys in 19th-century Maastricht….

The Dutch Research Council (NWO) has awarded Elise van Nederveen Meerkerk, member of the General Board of the N.W. Posthumus Institute, a VICI Grant for her research project ‘Care and Coercion. Patriarchy, (Forced) Labour and Caregiving in the Household in the Dutch Empire, c. 1750-Present’. Around the world, domestic and caregiving work are highly gendered…

The research group Cultures i Societats de l’Edat Mitjana (CiSEM) at the University of Valencia is organising the IV Doctoral School in Economic History of the Middle Ages, to be held from 30 June to 2 July 2025, which will be dedicated to ‘The Economy of Daily Life: Analysing Living Standards in Medieval Europe’. This…

~ because of required proficiency one in Dutch ~ Binnen het FWO-Odysseus project ‘The Social History of Finance’ bestaan momenteel vacatures voor een aantal student-assistenten. Aanstelling zal aan de Universiteit Antwerpen plaatsvinden; de daadwerkelijke invoer kan echter digitaal en derhalve op afstand plaatsvinden. De student-assistenten dienen tijdens hun tewerkstelling ingeschreven te staan als student aan…

On 23 June 2025, Posthumus alumna Robin Rose Southard will defend the PhD thesis ‘Biting the hand that feeds: contesting the food guilds in 18th-century Brussels’ at Vrije Universiteit Brussel. Supervisor is Professor Wouter Ryckbosch (Vrije Universiteit Brussel). More info will follow in due time. The N.W. Posthumus staff wished Robin Rose a successful defence.

On 12 February 2025, Posthumus alumnus Stan Pannier successfull defended his PhD thesis ‘Enterprising Merchants in the Global Atlantic – Frederic Romberg and the Austrian Netherlands Trade with West and Central Africa, 1775-1795’ at KU Leuven. Promotors were Professor Maïka De Keyzer (KU Leuven) and Dr Torsten Feys (Flanders Marine Institute (VLIZ)). By examining the…

On December 10-11, the Forgotten Lineages research project, featuring Posthumus fellow Dries Lyna and PhD students Pouwel van Schooten and Sanayi Marcelline will organise the two-day conference ‘Becoming Local? Forgotten Lineages of Displaced Communities across the Indian Ocean World, 1650-1850’ in Leiden. Confirmed keynote speakers are Jennifer L. Gaynor (University at Buffalo SUNY) and Sue…

The University of Groningen will be hosting a special event on 17 April 2025 to celebrate the career of Professor Herman de Jong ahead of his planned retirement at the end of the current academic year. The event will involve two parts: The first will be a workshop between 11:00 and 15:00 hours with short…

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…

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…