From the late twelfth and early thirteenth century onwards, against the backdrop of demographic growth and urbanization, a growing number of laypeople started to pursue a religious life without actually ...read more
Roman cities relied on privileged guilds to function. Craftsmen guilds (collegia fabri) took pride of place but remain much debated. We study their spread, membership, organization, influence and impact on ...read more
This project examines the communicative decisions of a high medieval institution under pressure. For centuries, Benedictine monks had enjoyed a virtual monopoly over institutionalized religious life in Europe. From the twelfth century ...read more
Throughout the period of 1890 to 1910, the adult male population of the city and district of Brussels experienced excess mortality. The mortality level of this group was much higher ...read more
This project studies early modern urban discourses on sodomy in the Southern Netherlands. Sodomy was considered as a crime against nature whose origins could be traced to the biblical cities ...read more
This PhD research is a comparative historical anthropology of cross-cultural interaction and local exchange-relations in late 18th-century China (Guangzhou), Japan (Dejima) and India (Bengal & Ganges-delta region).In this research, cross-cultural ...read more
This doctoral research project focuses on the judicial use of history. It is of an interdisciplinary nature considering legal as well as historical issues, although the emphasis lies on the ...read more
The project aims to contribute to the changing perspective on the history of Christian ethics by investigating the way in which economic, political and social developments influenced vernacular renditions of ...read more
The Late Roman ‘success story’ of urbanization in Africa Proconsularis, Byzacena, Numidia and Tripolitania has mostly been ascertained through generalizations from individual case studies. Broad studies of urban development that ...read more