Open Science NL recently awarded the project ‘Chains of the Past: Open Infrastructure for the Global History of Dutch Slavery and Slave Trade’ with an Open Science Infrastructure Grant of 1.5 million euros. In this project, jointly organised by Radboud University, the International Institute of Social History (IISG) and the Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast…

On 9 February 2026, the Koninklijke Hollandsche Maatschappij der Wetenschappen (KHMW; The Royal Holland Society of Sciences and Humanities) has appointed its new members, among whom Elise van Nederveen Meerkerk, Professor of Economic and Social History at Utrecht University and member of the General Board and Executive Committee of the N.W. Posthumus Institute. The KHMW,…

In the most recent funding round, the netherlands eScience center awarded a substantial in-kind contribution to the project ‘From rags to riches: A pipeline for processing semi-structured handwritten texts’ (Rags2Riches) as a result of the Open eScience Call 2025. The team involved in this project consists of researchers from various universities: Dr Auke Rijpma, Dr…

Posthumus fellows Dr Ramona Négron and Dr Karwan Fatah-Black invite research paper proposals for the workshop ‘Reinterpreting the Caribbean age of revolutions: Slave revolts, their non-slave participants and proto-citizenship’, to be held on 23 October 2026 at the KITLV/Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies in Leiden. Historians have found that in the…

Posthumus fellows Dr Ramona Négron and Dr Karwan Fatah-Black welcome graduate students working on topics related to early modern Caribbean and Atlantic slavery and emancipation to participate in a one-day graduate seminar on 22 October 2026 at the KITLV/Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies in Leiden, The Netherlands. The graduate workshop offers…

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 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)…