BOOK: Paolo AMOROSA, Ville ERKILLä & Karolina STENLUND (eds.), Times of Global Injustice. Temporalities of Power and Community Beyond Disciplinary Boundaries [Routledge Studies in Law, Rights and Justice] (London: Routledge, 2026), 388 p. ISBN 9781032873770, € 190

 

(image source: Routledge)

Abstract:

Time is an essential dimension of our shared understandings of the historical significance or fairness of a particular event or situation. The ways time is constructed, however, are characterised by a plurality of diverse and sometimes inconsistent representations. This book examines the uses of different conceptualizations of time in explaining injustice and justice in society from an interdisciplinary perspective.  It is the temporal representations that are the focus of this book here: how and by whom are they constructed, how do they weave together or fray in the process of working through temporary or permanent injustices, and what spaces are made or quashed for different understandings of time? The volume gathers scholars from different backgrounds with expertise from law, history, politics and international relations, philosophy, and sociology to examine the temporality of (in)justice in society. The chapters of the book are integrated around a coherent central theme: the unavoidable intertwining of time and justice. As well as addressing the lived processes of collectively coming to terms with temporal experiences and justice, the book work also discusses the different disciplinary ways of making sense of such processes and the strengths and pitfalls of each approach. The collection will be of interest to researchers and students of legal theory, international relations, global history, memory studies, and political philosophy.

Table of contents:

1.Introduction. Times of Global (In)justice.
Paolo Amorosa, Ville Erkkilä, Karolina Stenlund

Part I: Offcial Time

2. Why Do People Move? Governing the Time and Space of Climate Migration.
Usha Natarajan

3. Yesterday’s tomorrows and today’s: Future-making in Swedish permit-granting procedure
Agnes Hellner 

4. As If a Foreign Country: Evidence Law and Settler Colonial Sovereignty.
Genevieve Renard Painter

5. State redress for involuntary sterilisation in Sweden.
Malin Arvidsson

6. Urgency and Exceptional Time: The State of Emergency as an institution of official time.
Tuukka Brunila

Part II: Emancipatory Time 

7. How to Overcome an Unjust Past? Conflicts of Historicities in the Contemporary World.
Marek Tamm & Zoltán Boldizsár Simon

8. Urgency! At the European Court of Human Rights: Hope, Haste and Climate Justice.
Zoë Jay

9. Existential time and climate in/justice at the end of the world.
Andrew R. Hom

10.Law, Time, and Tradition.
Sebastián Machado

11.Stitching as reparation: expanding narrations of the past and imagining the future.
Helena Alviar García & Laura Betancur Restrepo

Part III: Everyday Time

12.Authoritarian Regimes and the ’Everyday Time.’ The trial of Greta Wolff.
Ville Erkkilä

13. Times of Hermeneutical Injustice: Memory Struggle in the Public Discussion around the Attack on the Elias Lönnrot Monument.
Ulla Savolainen

14. Rehearsing the Future Through Design.
Sara Duell

15. The Shape of Time to Come: The History of the Future in Teleological legal reasoning.
Karolina Stenlund

16. Conclusions: Just(ice) in Time

Bo Stråth

 On the editors:

Paolo Amorosa is University Lecturer of International Law at the Law Faculty, University of Helsinki, Finland. Ville Erkkilä is an Academy Research Fellow at the Centre for European Studies, University of Helsinki, Finland. Karolina Stenlund is a university researcher and team leader at the Research Council of Finland’s Centre of Excellence in Law, Identity, and the European Narratives (EuroStorie), based at the University of Helsinki, Finland.

 Read more here.

BOOK: Luka BRENESELOVIC and Arnd KOCH (eds.), Die europäische Bedeutung der Internationalen Kriminalistischen Vereinigung (IKV) 1889–1919 [Grundlagen des Strafrechts; 16] (Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlag, 2026), 336 p. ISBN 978-3-7560-0794-3

 

(image source: InLibra)

Abstract:

Die Internationale kriminalistische Vereinigung war eine international erfolgreiche Vereinsgründung der Belle Époque. Initiiert von Franz v. Liszt, Adolphe Prins und G. A. van Hamel legte sie ihrer Tätigkeit die Prämisse zugrunde, dass Verbrechen und Strafe „ebenso sehr vom soziologischen wie vom juristischen Standpunkte aus ins Auge gefasst werden müssen“ (Art. 1, Satzung von 1889). Auf dieser Basis erhob die IKV kriminalpolitische Forderungen, die bis heute das moderne Bild des Strafrechts maßgeblich prägen. Der Band widmet sich aus einer vergleichenden Perspektive der Tätigkeit und legislatorischen Wirksamkeit der nationalen Landesgruppen der IKV und leistet so einen wichtigen Beitrag zur europäischen Geschichte des Strafrechts.

Contributors:

Mit Beiträgen von Prof. Dr. Attila Barna | Dr. Luka Breneselović, LL.M. | Prof. Dr. Yves Cartuyvels | Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Cyrille Fijnaut | Prof. Dr. José Franco-Chasán | Prof. Dr. Sabine Freitag | Dr. Urs Germann | Prof. Dr. Jørn Jacobsen | Mag. Dr. Nina Kaiser | Prof. Dr. Sylvia Kesper-Biermann | Prof. Dr. Arnd Koch | Prof. Dr. Dr. Michael Kubiciel | Prof. Dr. Dunja Milotić | Prof. Dr. Martin Sunnqvist | Dr. Richard Wetzell

Read more here: 10.5771/9783748915515. 

BOOK: Simon GILBERT, Droit administratif: le cours alpha. Naissance d'une discipline académique et doctrine originelles (1804-1814) [Méthodes du droit] (Paris: Dalloz, 2026), 162 p. ISBN 9782247249268, € 35

 

(image source: Dalloz)

Abstract:

Peu de recherches ont jusqu'à présent permis d'identifier et d'analyser les premiers usages de l'expression « droit administratif » ni les conditions dans lesquelles l'enseignement de cette matière est apparu sous le Premier Empire. Le présent ouvrage revêt un triple objet : porter à la connaissance des contemporains du xxie siècle un corps de doctrines du Premier Empire aussi remarquables que méconnues inhérentes au caractère politique du droit administratif, qui forgent les conditions pour que la scriptogenèse de ce droit détermine son caractère autoritaire et qui jettent sur le droit contemporain une lumière aussi riche que nouvelle ; faire découvrir le contexte dans lequel est apparu cet enseignement académique en l'an XII (les motifs de son instauration, sa dévolution à une vingtaine de privatistes qui formèrent historiquement la première génération des professeurs de droit administratif, la manière dont ce droit a été représenté comme une matière académique d'un genre à part) ; mettre en relief le caractère mixte de ce droit dans les représentations prégnantes de l'époque, ce droit étant originellement considéré comme un composé de règles de droit public et de droit privé. La doctrine du Premier Empire assignait déjà à ce droit la fonction de déterminer des formes d'harmonie sociale, de fixer un point d'équilibre entre les lois civiles et politiques et de s'appliquer à certains rapports administratifs. Elle était convaincue que ce droit devait être en harmonie avec l'administration et fondé en la raison d'État. Elle a conceptualisé les conditions institutionnelles permettant de garantir que l'écriture matérielle du droit administratif soit compatible avec sa fonction politique.

On the author:

Simon Gilbert est professeur de droit public et doyen de la faculté de droit de l'université Paris-Est Créteil.

Read more here. 

 

PRIZE: Bader-Preis to legal historian Svit KOMEL (Ljubljana) (Vienna: Austrian Academy of Sciences)

 

(image source: ÖAW)

Abstract:

Der Bader-Preis für die Geschichte der Wissenschaft und Technik geht in diesem Jahr an Svit Komel von der Universität Ljubljana. Ausgezeichnet wird seine Dissertationsschrift „Rule and measure. A history of juridical practices in the age of surveys“, in der er die Abschaffung von Grundlasten und kollektiven Landnutzungsrechten in der Habsburgermonarchie zwischen 1853 und 1895 untersucht. Komel zeigt, wie die Grundentlastung, also die Auflösung gemeinschaftlicher Rechte von Bauern an Wäldern und Weiden, nicht nur ein agrarpolitischer Einschnitt war, sondern Ausdruck einer tiefgreifenden Veränderung im Verhältnis zwischen Staat, Wissenschaft und lokaler Gesellschaft. Im Zentrum seiner Analyse steht das Konzept der Vermessung: Kommissare wurden in alle Winkel der Monarchie entsandt, um Gewohnheitsrechte zu erfassen und neu zu kategorisieren – ein Prozess, der auf das Wissen der bäuerlichen Bevölkerung zwingend angewiesen war.

More information at the ÖAW. 

BOOK: Peter STACEY, The State in Machiavelli (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2025), ISBN 9781009630351, €145,89

 

(image source: Cambridge University Press)

Abstract:

While historical scholarship has often downplayed the importance of Machiavelli's theory of the state, this study reconstructs the question of lo stato as the conceptual crux of his political philosophy. Peter Stacey offers a detailed reconstruction of the historical context from which Machiavelli's theory emerges, demonstrating how the intellectual and ideological contours of Machiavelli's thinking, as well as much of its content, were decisively shaped by conceptual apparatuses drawn from Roman philosophical, rhetorical and aesthetic discourse. Stacey further provides a sustained analysis of the development of Machiavelli's picture of the state from his earliest writings onwards, underlining the extent to which the Florentine draws deeply upon several key aspects of this intellectual inheritance in hitherto unacknowledged ways, while calling into question some of its cherished assumptions about the character of collective political entities. As Machiavelli's thinking unfolds across The Prince and the Discourses, Stacey illustrates how a strikingly novel conception of the body politic marks him out as the author of a distinctively new philosophy of the state.

Read more here: DOI 10.1017/9781009630351.

SEMINAR: Cécile VIDAL, "L’argument du suicide dans le débat sur l’abolition de la traite et de l’esclavage en Grande-Bretagne et en France au XVIIIe siècle" (Paris: Sorbonne Université, 15 MAY 2026)

  

(image source: Sorbonne Université)

Cécile Vidal will intervene in the seminar hosted by the "Pôle Europe des Lumières" at Sorbonne Université on Wednesday 27 May at 17:30.

Title:

L’argument du suicide dans le débat sur l’abolition de la traite et de l’esclavage en Grande-Bretagne et en France au XVIIIe siècle.

More information here.

ADVANCE ARTICLE: Benjamin STRAUMANN, "From Individual virtue to the just state: Cicero and the legal nature of Roman political thought" (The Journal of Roman Studies) [OPEN ACCESS]

 

(image source: CUP)

Abstract:

Scholarship on Roman political thought and its legacy, especially anglophone, has rapidly expanded over the last decade. The main drivers of this renewed attention to Roman political ideas and institutions are an historical interest in the collapse of the Roman republic; a philosophical interest in republicanism; and a growing sensitivity to the originality of Roman thinkers, especially Cicero, in contrast to the older view that they were simply derivative of the Greeks. In this essay I will discuss recent publications on Cicero and Roman political ideas. After offering an overview of key themes in this new scholarship, I seek to suggest promising directions for future research and encourage the growing interest in Roman political thought and Cicero in particular. Cicero provides a fascinating link between ideas, institutions and action on the ground and he is therefore with good reason at the centre of much of the rapidly expanding literature on Roman political thought. In addition, given his interest in developing a theory of justice as the foundation of the state (res publica), a focus on Cicero will help explore the legacy of republicanism from the angle of his ideas about justice while paying attention to scholarship placing these ideas into their historical and institutional context.

Read more here: DOI  10.1017/S0075435825100634.

CLH ARTICLE: Mohammad FADEL, Doctrinal change in Mālikī law: the case of judicial divorce on account of harm (Ḍarar) (Comparative Legal History, XIII (2025), nr. 2 (December), pp. 190-221)

(Image source: Taylor&Francis)

Abstract:

This article explores doctrinal change in Mālikī law. Using the example of the distinctly Mālikī doctrine of a wife’s right to judicial divorce based on harm (ḍarar), it explores how this rule became the basic position of the school by no later than the eighth/fourteenth century, when Khalīl b Isḥāq included it in his authoritative Restatement of Mālikī law. The earliest sources of Mālikī law from the second/eighth century used the law of battery and principles of property law to protect a wife who suffered harm at the hands of her husband but did not provide her a right of divorce. Mālik, idiosyncratically, deemed the decision of the Quranic-mandated marital arbitrators to be binding. The combination of Mālikī commitments to a wife’s property rights, her right to bodily integrity and the broad powers they assigned to judges, beginning with marital arbitrators, along with the widespread inclusion in marriage contracts of covenants of good treatment that granted wives the right to divorce themselves if their husbands abused them, eventually led to the recognition of judicial divorce based on harm.

To read the article, please click here. Online access is free for members of the European Society for Comparative Legal History.

DOI: 10.1080/2049677X.2025.2579343

PODCAST: Scott Andrew KEEFER, "Building the Palace of Peace: The Hague Conference of 1907 and Arms Control before the World War" [Voices of JHIL]

 

Abstract:

In Episode 9 of the Voices of JHIL podcast, we once again turn to history to discuss timely and pressing questions. This time, Scott Andrew Keefer joins us to discuss his article “Building the Palace of Peace: The Hague Conference of 1907 and Arms Control before the World War,” published in JHIL 9(1) (2007), 35–81, which explores the international legal dynamics of the naval arms race of the early 20th century. From a comparative historical analysis of the multilateral failure of the 1907 Hague Conference and the bilateral success of the 1902 Argentine-Chilean Naval Armament Treaty, we move on to broader questions regarding international law’s capacity to respond to global security issues.

On the speaker:

Dr. Scott Andrew Keefer, Senior Lecturer in History at Bournemouth University. 

More information here. 

BOOK: Sandrine BAUME & David RAGAZZONI (eds.), Hans Kelsen on Constitutional Democracy Genesis, Theory, Legacies (Cambridge: CUP, 2026), ISBN 9781009230360 [OPEN ACCESS]

 

(image source: CUP)

Abstract:

This volume challenges conventional interpretations by demonstrating that Hans Kelsen was far from being a purely formalist thinker. Instead, it highlights his profound and enduring engagement with the threats facing constitutional democracies. The political and institutional upheavals of interwar Europe significantly influenced Kelsen's evolving vision of democracy, as this volume shows. His contributions to twentieth-century democratic theory include groundbreaking insights into multiparty systems, mechanisms of moderation, minority protections, and judicial review. Furthermore, Kelsen's reflections on the crises and collapses of democracies during the 1930s remain strikingly relevant, offering valuable perspectives on contemporary challenges such as polarisation and populism. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Read the full book here: DOI 10.1017/9781009230360.

BOOK: Laury SARTI, Mediterranean Connections: The Frankish Kingdoms and the Roman Empire (476–756) [The Medieval Mediterranean, 145, eds. Frances ANDREWS, Paul MAGDALINO, Jo Van STEENBERGEN, Larry SIMON, Daniel Lord SMAIL, Corisande FENWICK & Maria G. PARANI] (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2026), 240 p., ISBN: 978-90-04-74607-7, € 153.7

(image source: Brill)

Abstract:

This monograph challenges the idea that Roman imperial authority in the West ended in 476. It shows how the Frankish realm maintained ties to the empire, with real separation only emerging in the late sixth century. Tracing enduring Frankish-Byzantine diplomacy, shared identities, religious controversy, and trade into the seventh century, it reveals a landscape of continued exchange rather than abrupt decline. Including previously overlooked sources, the study offers a new perspective on Frankish identity, imperial affiliation, and the evolving relationship between Rome, the empire, and the Merovingians from the fifth to the eighth century.

On the author:

Laury Sarti, Ph.D. (2012), University of Hamburg, is Heisenberg Fellow at Heidelberg University.

Table of contents:

1. Introduction

     1.1 Outline and Questions

     1.2 Prior Research

     1.3 Approach and Methods

2. The Empire's Western Territories

     2.1 Odoacer and Theodoric

     2.2 One Empire

     2.3 476 in Retrospective

     2.4 The Empire and the West

     2.5 Results

3. Kings of the Empire

     3.1 Clovis and Theudebert I

     3.2 Romans and Franks in Gaul

     3.3 The Empire's Kingdom

     3.4 Franko-Byzantine Exchanges

     3.5 Factors of Alienation

     3.6 Results

4. Christian Community 

     4.1 The Pope between East and West

     4.2 The Tree Chapters Controversy 

     4.3 The Monothelite Controversy

     4.4 Results

5. Mediterranean Connectivity

     5.1 Diplomatic Exchange in a 'Dark Age'

     5.2 Pilgrimages to the East

     5.3 Travel Routes and Trade

     5.4 Language and Knowledge Exchange

     5.5 Results

6. Conclusions

Find more on Brill.

BOOK: Bianca PREMO, La Ilustración a juicio. Litigantes y colonialismo en el imperio español [Historia del Derecho en América Latina, 1ª Edición] (México: Tirant lo Blanch, 2026), 514 p., ISBN 9788491198727

(image source: Tirant)

Abstract:

Este libro examina cómo las ideas ilustradas se pusieron a prueba en el mundo cotidiano de la justicia iberoamericana entre las personas esclavizadas e indígenas, y entre las mujeres del siglo XVIII. Se centra en los tribunales civiles, tanto en América como en España, como espacios clave de debate sobre los derechos naturales, la expansión de la esfera secular, el historicismo y la libertad.  El libro enseña cómo leer el archivo judicial para sacar a la luz las ideas de personas no letradas, y redibuja la geografía de la modernidad para replantear el origen de nociones habitualmente atribuidas a Europa del Norte.  Al entablar un diálogo con la historia del derecho, la historia intelectual y la historia social, subraya cómo la práctica legal transformó filosofías abstractas en herramientas prácticas. En conjunto, ofrece una reinterpretación poderosa de la Ilustración como un fenómeno forjado en el derecho colonial.

On the author:

Bianca Premo es Profesora Distinguida Universitaria de Historia en la Florida International University, en Miami, Estados Unidos.

Table of contents:

Introducción ¿Por qué es Ilustración?       

Ilustración sin el siglo XVIII        

Escritura, historia y escritura de la historia del Imperio español       

La república de los iletrados        

Una definición        

Verificable y refutable: Un panorama del libro       

Método comparativo        

Regiones       

Periodo de tiempo        

Casos y litigantes         

PARTE I: LIMONES Y LIMONADA: DEMANDAR EN EL IMPERIO ESPAÑOL

1. Agentes y poderes. Litigantes y escritores en los tribunales        

Poderes: Papel y protocolo        

Agentes: autoría y opciones de los litigantes        

“Dios no paga”        

Conclusión         

2. Derecho y Ley: Ilustración jurídica en la filosofía y las políticas      

El árbol de limones: Ilustración jurídica ecléctica        

Limones: Derecho moderno temprano en el Imperio español        

El árbol: Pensamiento jurídico de la ilustración        

Jurisprudencia colonial        

Bravo de Lagunas y la jurisdicción secular        

Bravo de Lagunas y la esclavitud        

Leyes sobre leyes        

“Desembarazados y libres”: Leyes sobre eficiencia judicial        

Jueces de bronce        

El crecimiento de la jurisdicción secular   

Agentes y poderes revisados        

Conclusión         

3. Números y valores: Conteo de casos en el imperio español        

Números        

Conteo de casos        

Conteo de causas        

Valores        

La cultura orientada a la justicia de los Montes de Toledo        

Umbrales y puertas: Las demandas de los subordinados coloniales 

Conclusión        

PARTE II: LUCES A PARTIR DE LITIGANTES 

4. Pleitos y demandas. Conflictos conyugales en tribunales civiles    

Justicia        

Derechos        

Una breve historia sobre los alimentos     

Secularización e individualidad: Jurisdicción y disputas maritales      

Derechos naturales y otras fuentes de derecho        

Los casos civiles de las mujeres como Ilustración        

Conclusión         

5. Ayer y hoy. Estatus y costumbres indígenas        

Ayer            

Armonía y justicia        

La lengua de la ley: Disputas legales en lengua zapoteca        

Hoy                

El mérito o la nueva ciencia del estatus    

Costumbre hoy        

Casos civiles indígenas como Ilustración   

Conclusión         

6. Ser y devenir: Libertad y demandas de esclavos        

El comienzo de la libertad: Periodización e historiografía        

Fines de las demandas por esclavitud       

Jurisprudencia        

Los esclavos en los tribunales eclesiásticos y civiles        

Del amparo a los papeles        

Autoconservación y sevicia        

La personalidad jurídica de los esclavos   

“La libertad que requieran los juicios”       

La etapa de libertad         

Conclusión: Los litigios de esclavos como Ilustración        

Conclusión. ¿Por qué no Ilustración?

Find more on: Tirant.

CONFERENCE: 'Il Controllo: Riflessioni interdisciplinari su sicurezza, libertà, democrazia e giustizia penale' (Badia San Piero: Hotel Monteconero, 22-23 MAY 2026)[hybrid]

 (Source: Unimc)

More information available here.

BOOK: Niels FIEREMANS, Law, Leverage, and Litigation in Late Medieval Bruges. Foreign Merchants in a City of Justice (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2025), 248 p. ISBN 9781399545860, 90 GBP [OPEN ACCESS]

 

(image source: Edinburgh UP)

Abstract:

Explores the interaction between law and commerce in late medieval Bruges and its impact on the concept of justice Takes an interdisciplinary approach and engages in the debates of commercial history and legal history Draws on extensive archival material from across Europe Challenges the notion that a commercial city tailored its system to merchants Contributes to the field of customary law where scholars diverge from the previous theoretical law treaties and look to what happened in the more practical sources e.g. Litigation records Illustrated with examples to demonstrate key concepts and ideas Late medieval Bruges was a commercial hub that connected Hanseatic, English, Scottish, Portuguese, Spanish, Aragonese, and Italian traders. This book focuses on the conflict resolution of the aldermen and how merchants operated within this legal framework. The key question being whether Bruges was a city of justice. Although this was sometimes claimed by travellers, a lot of merchants confronted with the practicalities of conflict resolution in Bruges, disagreed. Fieremans analyses how customary law, institutional frameworks, and commerce intersected and were challenged by the aldermen's pursuit of justice. By clarifying the working of the aldermen, it advances our knowledge of the basic mechanisms of a late medieval law court and the evolution of the law courts of late medieval Flanders. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, the book focuses on the interplay between commerce and justice, explores the diverse merchant communities, and considers the potential lessons it offers for understanding both historical and modern markets. It sheds light on the pragmatic legal culture of Bruges and the legal mechanisms that partially regulate commerce.

Table of contents: 

Introduction: Historiography and Contribution

Part I. Law. The legal framework of late medieval Bruges

1. The procedures of the aldermen
2. The usage of procedures
3. The goal of these procedures

Part 2. Leverage. The group strategies to adapt the framework

1. The strategy of economic leverage: the Hanseatic, English and Scottish community
2. The strategy of political leverage: the Iberian communities
3. Strategies without privileges: the Italian communities

Part 3. Litigation. The individual strategies adapting the framework

1. The Council of Flanders and Bruges.
2. Supralocal courts. The Great Council and the Parliament of Paris
3. The end of Bruges legal dominance

Conclusion

Read the book in open access here. 

AWARDS: American Society for Legal History (DEADLINE 1 JUN 2026)

(image source: ACLS)

The American Society for Legal History announces several awards (among which the Global Dissertation Prize, the Cromwell Dissertation Prize and the Max Planck-ASLH Dissertation Prize for European Legal History in Global Perspective).

More information on the Society's website.

CALL FOR ARTICLES: Rechtskultur. Zeitschrift für Europäische Rechtsgeschichte - European Journal of Legal History - Journal européen d'histoire du droit (2025-2026 and 2026-2027)

(image source: Rechtskultur)

Rechtskultur is open to authors of all recognized areas of study irrespective of their university status. All that matters is that an article be of very high quality and in tune with the theme of the respective journal. 

Future topics of the annual journal will be:

• 2025/2026:  Shifts in Methodological Approaches to Law (Deadline August 2026)
• 2026/2027: The legal framework of innovation (Deadline August 2027)

Read more here.

BOOK: Christiaan ENGBERTS, Decentering Leuven University. A Transnational History (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2026), 328 p. ISBN 9789462705081 [OPEN ACCESS]

 

(image source: Leuven University Press)

Abstract:

First longue durée transnational history of a university, surveying its cross-border ties and offering a new model for writing university history. Since its foundation in 1425, Leuven University has always been a transnational institution. Decentering Leuven University explores how this transnational character has shaped the university across six centuries, with cross-border ties emerging as a recurring theme throughout its history from the Middle Ages to the present day. However, these ties are more than just a recurring theme: they provide an innovative approach to writing university history. Taking the myriad cross-border ties as a methodological starting point makes it possible to view the history of the university from a new perspective. The rich variety of these ties highlights the complexity and diversity within the university. The author discusses, among other things, Leuven’s role as a center of European humanism in the 15th century, the significance of its Irish and Dutch mission colleges during the Counter-Reformation, the university’s more recent involvement in the Belgian colonial project, and the emergence of research institutes as hubs of transnational collaboration in the 20th century. Emphasizing these transnational ties leads to two forms of decentering the university’s history: it underscores the university’s embeddedness in a variety of cross-border networks, and it highlights the role of individual scholars, students, colleges, and research institutes in creating and maintaining these ties.

Table of contents: 

Introduction
Universities, jubilees, and transnational ties
Introduction
The first university jubilees
Writing university history
Histories of Leuven University
The university in a transnational landscape
Leuven University from 1425 to 2025

Chapter 1
The transnational character of the early university
Introduction
Medieval universities before 1500
University, religion, and politics
The foundation of Leuven University
The recruitment of professors
Determining the geographical background of the early staff
The geographical background of professors in church law
The geographical background of professors in civil law
The geographical background of professors in medicine
The geographical background of professors in theology
The geographical background of professors in the arts
Determining the educational background of the early staff
The educational background of professors in church law
The educational background of professors in civil law
The educational background of professors in medicine
The educational background of professors in theology
The educational background of professors in the arts
A life after Leuven?
Conclusion: becoming self-sufficient
 Chapter 2
Humanist entanglements
Introduction
Vives and Erasmus: Leuven’s early humanist luminaries
The networks of Vives and Erasmus
Humanism in Leuven before 1517
The foundation of the Collegium Trilingue
The (trans)national teaching staff of the Trilingue
A typical humanist: the research-minded traveler Campensis
A typical humanist: the printing endeavors of Rutgerus Rescius
A typical humanist: Petrus Nannius’s correspondence network
European students at the Trilingue
Trilingue students in Europe: the linguist Clenardus
Trilingue students in Europe: the diplomat Busbequius
Trilingue students in Europe: the anatomist Vesalius
An example worth following
Conclusion: a merging of university and humanist networks

Chapter 3
On the frontlines of faith
Introduction
Counter-Reformation and higher education in the seventeenth century
Leuven and the Irish college network
Irish history from Leuven
Irish Catholicism in Leuven
The precarious position of Catholicism in the northern Low Countries
Jesuits vs. Dutch secular clergy
Jesuits and the Leuven Augustinian tradition
Jesuits and Jansenists
St. Anthony’s, Pulcheria, and Alticollense
Toward the founding of an American College
The accomplishments of the American College
Leuven as an example of Catholicism and scholarship
Latin America in Leuven
Over four centuries of mission colleges

Chapter 4
Collections as transnational spaces
Leuven’s first central library
Catholic patristics and ecumenical medicine?
Collections, teaching, and research in the nineteenth century
The university collections in the mid-nineteenth century
The roots of the botanical garden
The botanical garden’s transnational branches
The birth of the zoological collection
Van Beneden’s transnational paleontological networks
The genesis of the Biblical Museum
A network of scholarly clergymen
The destruction of the library
International collaboration toward a new library
Reassembling the lost collection
The construction of a brand-new library
University collections and transnational networks

Chapter 5
The colonial involvement of Leuven University
Universities and colonialism
The first colonial programs at Belgian universities
A Catholic colonial student movement
Collecting the colony
After the First World War
First steps into the colony
The early expansion of FOMULAC: 1926-1931
The rapid expansion of FOMULAC: 1931-1945
Agricultural education in the Congo
Toward a university: University Centre Lovanium
The founding of a full university: Lovanium Kimwenza
Lovanium and Leuven University after Congolese independence
Leuven and Congo: a retrospective

Chapter 6
Research institutes as transnational hubs
The rise of research institutes
The Higher Institute of Philosophy
The laboratory for experimental psychology
The founding of the Husserl Archives
The growth of the Husserl Archives
Penicillin and the prelude to the Rega Institute
Polio vaccines and the founding of the Rega Institute
Developing viral treatments at the Rega Institute
Bananas come to Belgium
Banana research, conservation, and distribution in Leuven
The KU Leuven Institutes of the twenty-first century
Conclusion: research institutes between 1938 and 2025

Epilogue
Uniqueness and typicality
Change and continuity
Recent transnational developments
The merits and promise of transnational university histories
Notes

On the author:

Christiaan Engberts studied philosophy and history at Leiden University. Until recently he was affiliated with the Research Group Cultural History since 1750 at KU Leuven.

Read more here: DOI  10.11116/9789461667274.

ADVANCE ARTICLE: Julia RUDOLPH, "William Blackstone, Family Man: New Contexts in Gender, Jurisprudence, and Jamaica" (Law & History Review) [OPEN ACCESS]

 

(image source: Cambridge Core)

Abstract:

While much has been written about William Blackstone, the jurist, politician, and legal writer, this article provides a critical new understanding of Blackstone, the husband, friend, and investor. It considers Blackstone’s legal and economic actions as well as ideas, analyzing his strategies for managing family wealth and comparing them to the strategies employed by a member of his extended family who was a Jamaican planter. Here, the article contributes to recent scholarship on the global dimensions of English and British legal history. It offers a fuller account of Blackstone’s proximity to the colonial plantation economy by investigating how economic change and imperial controversies impacted his personal and professional life. It also exposes Blackstone’s conventionally masculine bias by detailing the different ways in which he privileged male interests when making personal investment choices and when coming to judicial decisions about women’s property claims. A gendered ideology, which positioned male authority as central to the success of the household, state, and empire, furnished the framework within which Blackstone justified the operation of law and directed his own actions as head of his family. Placing Blackstone’s jurisprudence and experience within the contexts of patriarchy and colonialism, the article sheds new light on this influential figure, showing how he embodied the core features of an eighteenth-century family man and shaped modern ideas about male authority, property, and power.

The full article can be read here in open access: DOI 10.1017/S0738248026101618.

(Source: Legal History Blog)

NOTICE: PhD Defenses in Legal History [Association des Historiens des Facultés de Droit] (Paris/Nantes, APR/MAY 2026)

 

(image source: AssoHFD)

The Association des Historiens des Faculté de Droit reported the PhD Defenses of

• Baptiste ROBAGLIA (Paris II Panthéon-Assas), Un humaniste au Palais : Étienne Pasquier (1529-1615), penseur d’un droit national (dir. Philippe COCATRE-ZILGIEN & Xavier PRÉVOST) (10 April 2026)
• Ambre JARASSIER (Nantes Université), Les sénatus-consultes napoléoniens, entre constituer et légiférer (dir; Grégoire BIGOT) (5 May 2026)

More information on the jury composition can be found by clicking on the links above.