Wim De Winter (M.A., Ghent University) is an interdisciplinary cultural historian currently undertaking PhD.-research at Ghent University, on a comparative ethnohistory of cultural interaction and performative exchanges of the Ostend Company in 18th century Bengal and Canton. This research forms part of a wider project on 'Seafaring, Trade and Knowledge Transfer' under direction of Prof. Dr. Angela Schottenhammer (Salzburg University), and is supported by an 'Interdisciplinary Research Scholarship' from the Gerda Henkel Stiftung. He is an associate of the Indian Ocean World Centre – Team 3 (McGill), and of the research groups Communities, Comparisons, Connections and Culture in Perspective at Ghent University. He has previously published on gift-exchange in early-modern Japan, the Ostend Company's courtly encounters in 18th century Bengal and China, and the colonial appropriation of that history.
