Northwestern Europe experienced rapid and intense climate variations during late Quaternary times. These climate variations profoundly affected the environment, and the effects are well reflected in vegetational changes. Past vegetations are reconstructed ...read more
In a majority of food studies, visual arts are used as documentary evidence for the analysis of culinary history. Although these valuable studies show a lot of scientific interest in the ...read more
The concept of ‘harmful cultural practices’ has been increasingly used in development and humanrights discourse to refer to practices such as female genital cutting, honour related violence orforced marriages. However, ...read more
This project aims to re-evaluate education in monastic contexts of 11th and 12th century Western Europe by relying on the concept of "communities of practice", a notion borrowed from the social sciences. ...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 PhD project revolves around the phenomenon of Dutch and French change-of-state semi-copulas (i.e. meaning ‘become’), more specifically those that originate from verbs which typically express physical motion (e.g. (ge)raken, komen, ...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
The wider Lower Congo region in Central Africa is home to the Kikongo language cluster (KLC), a vast cluster of regiolects spoken in four neighbouring countries: Angola including Cabinda, the ...read more