Posthumus Conference 2025 (Nijmegen, 27-28 May)

Sessions – Tuesday 27 May 2025

Tuesday 27 May
10:30-12:15
room 01.310
Session 1A – Energy multinationals: between the national, colonial, and global perspectives
Organised by Research Network ‘Globalisation, Inequality, and Sustainability in Long-Term Perspective’
Lexy Remy (Erasmus University Rotterdam) – The Atlantic Hub: US multinationals, taxation, and the Dutch post-war investment climate, 1945-1980
peer commentator: Gianluca Ratti

Marten Boon (Utrecht University) – A decarbonization trilemma? Sustainability tradeoffs and the governance of state ownership in the case of Statoil/Equinor, 2001-2022

10:30-12:15
room 01.170
Session 1B – Highs and lows: Income and living standards in the Low Countries (1750-1950)
Organised jointly by Research Networks ‘Life-courses, Family, and Labour’ and ‘Economy and Society of the Pre-industrial Low Countries in Comparative Perspective’
Matthias van Laer (University of Antwerp) – Seasons of stability. Seasonal wages, unemployment and the stability of labour income in the Netherlands, 1910-1950
peer commentator: Eva Seuntjens

Paul Puschmann (Radboud University), Auke Rijpma (Utrecht University), and Rick Schouten (Utrecht University) – Migrant inclusion in the 19th-20th century labor market: comparing migrant and native earnings using the Historical Income Panel of the Netherlands (HIP-NL)

Wout Saelens (University of Antwerp) – Cheap coal, poor people: energy and working-class living standards in Belgium during the bicentenary age of coal (c. 1750-1950)

10:30-12:15
room 01.520
Session 1C – New research on Central and East Africa
Organised by Research Network ‘Routes and Roots in Colonial and Global History’
Margot Luyckfasseel (University of Antwerp) – The Slave Past, Colonial Feedback, and Oral History in Eastern Congo

Ivana Zecevic (University of Groningen) – Medicalization of reproductive health in Villa Maria and Mua Mission Hospitals, 1900s-1980s
peer commentator: Marie Keulen

Mesfin Ali (Wageningen UR) – Educational expansion and inequality in Ethiopia: 1940-2007
peer commentator: Vincent Laarman

14:15-16:00
room 01.110
Session 2A – Justice and the law
Organised by Research Network ‘Inclusion, Exclusion and Mobility’
Dave De ruysscher (Tilburg University) – Justice eroded: appeals against judgments of the Cloth Hall (Antwerp, c. 1490-c. 1560)

Sherilyn Bouyer  (University of Groningen) – Murder in Saverdun (1666): the bipartisan court of Castres and the Protestant litigants of the Languedoc seventy years after the French Wars of Religion
peer commentator: Dominique Giliam Ankoné

Matteo De Vuyst (Ghent University) – Paths to justice. Crime, prosecution and punishment in Bruges (1870-1910)
peer commentator: Yowali Kabamba

14:15-16:00
room 01.170
Session 2B  – Food provisioning in western Europe in the 16th to 19th centuries
Organised by Research Network ‘Societies in Context: Interactions between Humans and Rural-Urban Environment’
Cécile Bruyet (University of Antwerp) – From garden to table – Urban and peri-urban agriculture in late medieval Antwerp
peer commentator: Janny van Doorn

Jessica Dijkman (Utrecht University) and Rogier van Kooten (Utrecht University / University of Antwerp) – War, harvest failure, and dearth: inequality and grain shortages in 16th-century Antwerp

Dennis De Vriese (Vrije Universiteit Brussel) – Fostering competition through competitions. The Boeuf Gras cattle contest as a means of steering a free market for meat in Brussels, 1830-1860

14:15-16:00
room 01.550
Session 2C – Coping with crisis
Organised by Research Network ‘Economy and Society of the Pre-industrial Low Countries in Comparative Perspective’
Nelleke Tanis (University of Antwerp) – The Social History of Finance: coping with crisis
peer commentator: Brent Huygh

Janna Coomans (Utrecht University) – Fire adaptation and crisis in Dutch cities, 1400-1550

Edda Frankot (Utrecht University) – Coping with grain crises in the late medieval Netherlands