Robrecht Declercq is postdoctoral researcher of the Research Foundation – Flanders (FWO) since the 1st of October 2017, and affiliated to the History Department of the Ghent University. His main research interests include business, global economic and ecological history. In February 2015, Declercq defended his Phd on the global connections of the Leipzig Fur Industry at the European University Institute (EUI) in Florence. This phd-research examined how a local industrial district – like the Leipzig fur industry – characterised by many small to medium sized businesses successfully operated on the world market in the period between 1870 and 1939. It bridges the interior-based research tradition on industrial districts with that of global economic history. In 2016, his research was nominated for the Best Dissertation Award in Bergen (Norway), by the European Business History Assocation (EBHA). As of June 2017, the phd has been published as a book by Routledge, titled “World Market Transformation: Inside the German Fur Capital Leipzig 1870 – 1939”. His current research is also situated on the crossroads of business and global economic history, examining the role and activities of modern natural resource companies in the creation of the global copper frontier and world market between 1900 and 1939.
