Ulbe Bosma
is Senior Researcher at the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam and Professor of International Comparative Social History at VU Amsterdam. He has published widely on colonial and postcolonial history and has a particular interest in the history of sugar, on which he published for example The Sugar Plantation in India and Indonesia. Industrial Production 1770–2010. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013). Contact: u.t.bosma@vu.nl
Pepijn Brandon
is Assistant Professor in Social and Economic History at VU Amsterdam and Senior Researcher at the International Institute of Social History. He obtained his PhD from the University of Amsterdam in 2013. His research focuses on connections between capitalist development, war, and slavery. He is author of War, capital, and the Dutch state (1588–1795) (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2015), and a member of the editorial committee of the International Review of Social History. Contact: p.brandon@vu.nl and pepijn.brandon@iisg.nl
Jaap Bruijn
is Emeritus Professor of Maritime History at Leiden University. Together with his late colleague Dik van Arkel he was the supervisor of Karel Davids’s PhD in 1986. His main publications are related to the history of the Dutch East India Company, the Dutch navy and seamen. His latest book is Zeegang. Zeevarend Nederland in de achttiende eeuw (Zutphen: Walburg Pers, 2016). Contact: bruijn_oegstgeest@planet.nl
Petra van Dam
holds the Endowed Chair for Water, Culture, and Environment (Waterstaatsgeschiedenis) at VU Amsterdam. She focuses on the environmental, social-economic, and political aspects of the relationships between humans and water, and humans, animals, and landscape. She is active in the European Society for Environmental History. She is founding editor of the book series Water, cultuur en geschiedenis (Water, culture, and history) and co-founder of the Environmental Humanities Center at VU Amsterdam. Contact: p.j.e.m.van.dam@vu.nl
Victor Enthoven
was educated and trained as a maritime historian at Leiden University. He cooperated in several projects with Karel Davids. From 2008 until 2017 he was
Sabine Go
is Assistant Professor of Accounting at the School of Business and Economics of VU Amsterdam. She is particularly interested in the emergence and development of economic institutions during early modern and modern times in the Low Countries. Her current research focuses on contract enforcement and governance issues. She collaborates as Senior Visiting Fellow in an ERC Consolidator Grant Project on General Average, Transaction Costs, and Risk Management during the First Globalization. Contact: sabine.go@vu.nl
Marjolein ’t Hart
studied history at the University of Groningen. In 1989 she obtained her PhD from Leiden University, which was published as The making of a bourgeois state. War, politics and finance during the Dutch Revolt (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1993) She has taught social and economic history at various universities. Since 2013, she has been Head of the History Department at Huygens ING and Professor in the History of State Formation at VU Amsterdam. Her latest publications include De wereld en Nederland. Een sociale en economische geschiedenis van de laatste duizend jaar (Amsterdam: Boom, 2011, with Karel Davids) and The Dutch Wars of Independence. Warfare and commerce in the Netherlands, 1570–1680 (London: Routledge, 2014). Contact: m.c.t.hart@vu.nl
Raoul De Kerf
studied history at the University of Antwerp, where he received his PhD and is a member and collaborator of the Centre for Urban History. He did research on how a just price was perceived in late medieval towns, on the circulation of technical knowledge among guild-based artisans in Early Modern Antwerp, and on the construction of urban/national citizenship in Europe before and after 1789. At the moment, he researches media reports on the current war in Syria and how different actors tried to manipulate public discourses in the early twenty-first century. Contact: raoul.dekerf@uantwerpen.be
Jan Lucassen
studied history at Leiden University. He defended his PhD, on Migrant labour in Europe 1600–1900, at Utrecht University in 1984. In 1988, he joined the International Institute for Social History in Amsterdam, where he founded the research
Karin Lurvink
obtained her PhD from VU Amsterdam in 2016. Her PhD thesis was published as Beyond racism and poverty. The truck system on Louisiana plantations and Dutch peateries, 1865–1920 (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2018). She is currently a postdoctoral researcher at VU Amsterdam where she works on the NWO-project “Slaves, commodities and logistics” on the long-term impact of slavery on the Dutch economy in the eighteenth and nineteenth century. Contact: k.lurvink@vu.nl
Joel Mokyr
is the Robert H. Strotz Professor of Arts and Sciences and Professor of Economics and History at Northwestern University, and Sackler Professor at the Eitan Berglas School of Economics at the University of Tel Aviv. A former editor of the Journal of Economic History and president of the Economic History Association, he is or has been a member of the editorial boards of the leading journals of economic history and is the editor in chief of the five-volume Oxford Encyclopedia of Economic History. Mokyr is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and was elected a foreign member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2001. He was the winner of the Heineken Prize for History in 2006 and the International Balzan Prize for economic history in 2015. His most recent book is A culture of growth (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016). Contact: j-mokyr@northwestern.edu
Marijn Molema
obtained his PhD in 2010 from VU Amsterdam for his dissertation on the history of regional economic policy. He is a historian of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries at the Fryske Akademy, a research institute in Leeuwarden which is part of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW). His research focuses on regional socioeconomic development from the Industrial Revolution onwards, with a special emphasis on vulnerable regions, as well as on agribusiness clusters. Contact: m.molema@fryske-akademy.nl
Bert de Munck
is Professor at the History Department of the University of Antwerp, Belgium, teaching “History of the early modern period,” “Theory of historical knowledge,” and “Public history.” He is member of the Centre for Urban History at the same university and director of the Scientific Research Community (WOG) “Urban agency. The historical fabrication of the city as an object of study” and of the interdiscplinary “Urban Studies Institute.” While he has worked on apprenticeship, craft guilds, labour, and social capital, his current research interests include the circulation of technical knowledge, guilds and civil society, and conceptual and theoretical approaches to urban history and urban studies. Contact: bert.demunck@uantwerpen.be
Pál Nyíri
is Professor of Global History from an Anthropological Perspective at VU Amsterdam. His main current research focus is on the international mobility of emerging Chinese elites. He is the author, most recently, of Reporting for China: How Chinese correspondents work with the world (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2017) and co-editor of Chinese encounters in Southeast Asia: How people, money, and ideas from China are changing a region (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2016). Contact: p.d.nyiri@vu.nl
Harm Pieters
studied history at Radboud University, Nijmegen, the Netherlands and worked at VU Amsterdam as junior researcher. He is interested in the history of natural disasters, cultural history, and heritage studies. He currently works for the Dutch National Archive and is a member of the editorial board of the Holland Historisch Tijdschrift (Holland Historical Journal). Contact: harmpieters@hotmail.com
Matthias van Rossum
is Senior Researcher at the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam. Studying the social and intercultural relations between European and Asian sailors working for the VOC, he completed his PhD from the VU Amsterdam (2013) under supervision of Karel Davids and Jan Lucassen. He currently works on global labour history with a special interest in maritime labour history, coercion in labour relations, and the dynamics of labour conflicts and social relations. He was awarded a NWO Veni Grant for research on the history of slavery and slave trade in early modern Dutch Asia (2016–2019). Contact: mvr@iisg.nl
Joost Schokkenbroek
has served as curator at various museums before becoming Chief Curator at Het Scheepvaartmuseum Amsterdam (The Dutch National Maritime Museum). Since 2013 Schokkenbroek has held the position of Professor of Maritime History and Maritime Heritage at VU Amsterdam. Since July 2017, Schokkenbroek acts as Executive Director of the Vancouver Maritime Museum. He has published profusely on whaling in the Arctic and the Pacific oceans, on trading companies, on maritime archaeology, on naval warfare, and on maritime material culture, museum practices, and maritime heritage. Contact: director@vanmaritime.com
Jeroen Touwen
is Associate Professor in Economic and Social History at Leiden University. He studied history at Leiden University and Rutgers University (New Brunswick, NJ) and received his PhD in 1997. His dissertation was titled Extremes in the archipelago. Trade and economic development in the Outer Islands of Indonesia, 1900–1942 (Leiden: KITLV Press, 2001). In 2014, he published Coordination in transition. The Netherlands and the world economy, 1950–2010. (Leiden: Brill, 2014). Contact: l.j.touwen@hum.leidenuniv.nl
Wybren Verstegen
is Assistant Professor in Economic and Social History at VU Amsterdam. He teaches Global History, the History of the United States and the US South. His dissertation about nobility and society in the revolutionary era in Veluwe-district (in the east of the Netherlands) was published in 1989. He has written many scientific and newspaper articles concerning environmental history and sustainability. Recently he published the book Vrije wandeling. Het parlement, de fiscus en de bescherming van het particuliere Nederlandse natuurschoon tussen 1924–1995 (Groningen: Historia Agriculturae, 2017) as well as several articles about nature protection on estates in the Netherlands in the twentieth century. Contact: s.w.verstegen@vu.nl
Jan Luiten van Zanden
is Professor in Global Economic History at Utrecht University and has published widely about patterns of long term economic change in the past. He is also interested in the development of biodiversity and the human drivers of its decline. Contact: j.l.vanzanden@uu.nl
Karel Davids in front of the birthplace of Max and Alfred Weber.
Photo courtesy of Marjolein ’t Hart