CORN (Comparative Rural History of the North Sea Area) is a research network founded in 1995, made out of about 20 research units spread in NW Europe and coordinated by scholars from Ghent University and the University of Leuven (Belgium) in collaboration with Utrecht University (The Netherlands). It consists of different research units that primarily aim to study long-term developments of rural societies from the Middle Ages to the twentieth century. It focuses on the North Sea area from a comparative and an interdisciplinary point of view.