Education: Janna Everaert (Gent, 1990) studied history at the University of Ghent and the Universidad de Valladolid. She obtained a teacher degree in 2013 at the University of Antwerp and an Advanced Master in Archival Studies in 2014 at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel with a MA dissertation on the valorisation of the archives in museums named after their founder.
PhD: In 2020 she defended her PhD dissertation "Power in the Metropolis. Political elite formation during the economic and demographic bloom of Antwerp (ca. 1400-1550)". She started this joint PhD project in 2014 at HOST (Historisch Onderzoek naar Stedelijke Transformatieprocessen, VUB) and CSG (Centrum voor Stadsgeschiedenis, UA), under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Anne Winter (VUB) Prof. Dr. Frederik Buylaert (UGent) and Prof. Dr. Peter Stabel (UA). The dissertation focussed on the impact of the economic and demographic growth of Antwerp on the urban elites. In the context of this research Janna stayed as a guest researcher at the Università degli Studi di Parma during the Spring of 2017. The book version of her PhD thesis was published in 2023.
Expertise (historical research): city councils, nobility, urban elites, merchants, real estate and residential patterns, lordship, 15th-16th centuries, Low Countries, Duchy of Brabant, Antwerp
Expertise (education): the impact of AI on (history) education in secondary schools and universities
Work: Janna Everaert is working as a (part-time) teaching assistant middle ages & early modern period at Ghent University since 2018. She combines this job with other professional challenges: she was a guest professor in 2021 (History of the Low Countries) and in 2022 (Research Methods for Historians); she is a freelance author for the history method Epic 4 and 6 (Plantyn); and since 2023, she gives lectures and training on the development of GenAI tools and its impact on (history) education.
Key Publications:
- Everaert, Janna, en Sieben Feys. ‘Urban political elites and seigneurial lordship: Antwerp and its hinterland (c. 1400-1550)’. In Erika Graham-Goering, Jim van der Meulen, and Frederik Buylaert, eds. Lordship and the Decentralized State in Late Medieval Europe. Proceedings of the British Academy, 268, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2025, p. 143-161.
- Everaert, Janna. Macht in de metropool. Politieke elitevorming tijdens de demografische en economische bloeifase van Antwerpen (ca. 1400-1550). Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2023.
- Everaert, Janna. ‘Power in the Metropolis. The Impact of Economic and Demographic Growth on the Antwerp City Council (1400-1550)’. Urban History 47, nr. 4 (2020): 589–609.
- Buylaert, Frederik, Jelten Baguet, en Janna Everaert. ‘Returning Urban Political Elites to the Research Agenda: The Case of the Southern Low Countries (c. 1350 - c. 1550)’. Urban History 47, nr. 4 (2020): 568–88.
- Everaert, Janna. ‘A Trail of Trials. A “Flemish” Merchant Community in Sixteenth-Century Valladolid and Medina Del Campo’. Tijdschrift Voor Sociale En Economische Geschiedenis 14, nr. 1 (2017): 5–35.
