VACANCY: Postdoc (100%) - Stepchildren in early modern Brabant (Leuven: KULeuven, DEADLINE 16 FEB 2026)

 

(image source: Academic positions)

Abstract:

The KU Leuven Research Unit Roman Law and Legal History, which is a department of the Faculty of Law and Criminology, is an interdisciplinary and internationally oriented research group, which currently consists of four professors and about ten junior researchers. Next to a research axis on the history of international law and colonial legal history, the department has a strong focus on and track record in the study of ius commune, especially in the early modern period (15th-18th centuries). From 1 March 2026 onwards, the Research Unit (prof. dr. Wouter Druwé) will also be coordinating an interdisciplinary European MSCA Doctoral Network on the history of testamentary law and practices in the early modern period, bringing together social and legal historians from five different universities and several archives and museums in four European countries.

The current vacancy is part of a project funded by the Research Foundation - Flanders (FWO) on "Stepchildren in the early modern Duchy of Brabant: the interplay between particular law and ius commune (1425-1629)" (G027826N). The project investigates how contractual and testamentary freedom, as developed in learned law and moral theology, could, already in the early modern period, be employed to moderate the legal ramifications of the distinction between consanguineous offspring and stepchildren in particular law. In the early modern Low Countries, there were many stepfamilies (blended families), partly because of the high mortality rate. The factual omnipresence of stepchildren contrasts with the limited attention that has been given to them in both early modern particular law and legal-historical scholarship today. The project focuses on the early modern Duchy of Brabant, where the number of jurists and moral theologians that had studied Roman law increased after the foundation of the Leuven university in 1425. Learned jurists took on several functions in legal practice, as judges, aldermen, and ducal councellors. Research into the archives of the university town of Leuven, the mercantile hub of Antwerp, and the administrative city of 's-Hertogenbosch on the basis of prenuptial agreements, last wills, and donations will uncover the extent to which the learned legal tradition was employed to deviate from customary law in addressing legal challenges encountered by stepfamilies.

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BOOK: Tibor VARADY, People in Spite of History - Stories Found in an Attorney Archive in the Banat Region (Budapest: CEU Press, 2021). ISBN 978-963-386-407-4, 75.00 EUR

 

(Source: CEU Press)

The Central European University Press is publishing a book on documents of three generations of lawyers from a local family of lawyers in early 20^th century Serbia.

ABOUT THE BOOK

Three generations of a family of lawyers have run a firm founded in 1893 in the small city of Becskerek (today in Serbian Zrenjanin), first part of the Austro-Hungarian Habsburg monarchy, then Hungary, then Yugoslavia, then for a while under German occupation, then again part of Yugoslavia and finally Serbia. In the Banat district of the province of Vojvodina, the multiplicity of languages and religions and changes of place-names was a matter of course.

What is practically unprecedented, all files, folders, and documents of the law office have survived. They concern marriages, divorces, births, and testaments, as well as expulsions, emigrations, incarcerations and releases of these largely rural and small-town dwellers. Mundane cases reflect times through war, peace, revolution, and counter-revolution, through serfdom and freedom, through comfort and poverty. The files also show everyday lives shaped in spite of history. Tibor Várady transforms them into affecting and vivid vignettes, selecting and commenting without sentimentality but with empathy. The law office of the three generations of the Várady family demonstrates that the legal profession permits and in difficult times even requires its members to defend the ordinary men and women against the powers of state and society. 

TABLE OF CONTENTS

FOREWORD by Richard Buxbaum
What is This Book about?
I. ON THE RELEVANCE OF HISTORY

II. THREE BECSKEREK STORIES -- Featuring Local Jews and Germans in the Leading Roles
An anacrusis
1.The Eckstein Case
2. Socks on the Chandelier, Lives by a Thread
3. The Freund/Baráth Document

III. HUNGARIAN STORIES OF BANAT - People and Formulae
1. An Early Attempt to Topple the Soviet Power in Hungary
2. The Case of István Bakai with Various Armies
3. Is There a Window to Shoot From?

IV. A STORY FROM THE BORDER OF BANAT
From Goose-down Business and Border Trespassing to Concentration Camp

V. DIVORCES, NEAR DIVORCES, AND SHAM DIVORCES
1. A Near Divorce
2. Divorces and Sham Divorces in the Wake of World War Two
3. A Husband Who Very Seldom Visits Pubs and Only in the People's Interest

VI. LEGENDS CHECKED IN LEGAL FILES
1. The Messinger
2. Dueling in Becskerek

VII. THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE ECONOMIC SITUATION – Lawsuits in the Years of the First Five-Year Plan
Some Perspective in Introduction
1. Corn or Corn Flour
2. Even if the Money is Made Available, I Cannot Transfer It
3. Cooperative Denial
4. A Calf-Killing Against the People’s Interests
5. Mafia-type Activity in the Years of the First Five-Year Plan

VIII. EXPLOITING FASCISM AND ANTI-FASCISM IN DISPUTES BETWEEN NEIGHBOURS AND CHURCHES

1 Fascism for Household Use in Becskerek
2 A Cynical Anti-People Smile (From Behind the Window)

VI. LEGENDS CHECKED IN LEGAL FILES

1.      The Messinger
2.      Duels in Becskerek

VII. THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE ECONOMIC SITUATION – Lawsuits in the Years of the First Five Year plan

1. Some Perspective in Introduction
1. Corn or Cornflour
2. Even if the Money is Made Available, I cannot Transfer if
3. Cooperative Denial
4. A Calf-Killing Against the People’s Interests
5. Mafia-type Activity in the Years of the First Five-year Plan

VIII. EXPLOITING FASCISM AND ANTI-FASCISM IN DISPUTES BETWEEN NEIGHBOURS AND CHURCHES

1        Fascism for Household Use in Becskerek - Jemrics néni a.k.a. Adolf Fichtner    
2        A cynical anti-people smile (from behind the window)

 

More info here

BOOK: Julie HARDWICK, Sex in an Old Regime City - Young People, Production, and Reproduction in France, 1660-1789 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020). ISBN 9780190945183, $35.00

(Source: OUP)

OUP is publishing a book on the history of young people's intimacy, based on legal records from the city of Lyon during the Ancien Régime.

ABOUT THE BOOK

Our ideas about the long histories of young couples' relationships and women's efforts to manage their reproductive health are often premised on the notion of a powerful sexual double standard.

In Sex in an Old Regime City, Julie Hardwick offers a major reframing of the history of young people's intimacy. Based on legal records from the city of Lyon, Hardwick uncovers the relationships of young workers before marriage and after pregnancy occurred, even if marriage did not follow, and finds that communities treated these occurrences without stigmatizing or moralizing. She finds a hidden world of strategies young couples enacted when they faced an untimely pregnancy. If they could not or would not marry, they sometimes tried to terminate pregnancies, to make the newborn go away by a variety of measures, or to charge the infant to local welfare institutions. Far from being isolated, couples drew on the resources of local communities and networks. Clerics, midwives, wet nurses, landladies, lawyers, parents, and male partners in and outside the city offered pragmatic, sympathetic ways to help young, unmarried pregnant women deal with their situations and hold young men responsible for the reproductive consequences of their sexual activity. This was not merely emotional work; those involved were financially compensated. These support systems ensured that the women could resume their jobs and usually marry later, without long-term costs. In doing so, communities managed and minimized the disruptions and consequences even of cases of abandonment and unprosecuted infanticide.

This richly textured study re-thinks the ways in which fundamental issues of intimacy and gendered power were entwined with families, communities, and religious and secular institutions at all levels from households to neighborhoods to the state.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Julie Hardwick is the John E. Green Professor of History at the University of Texas at Austin. She is the author of Family Business: Litigation and the Political Economies of Daily Life in Seventeenth-Century France (OUP, 2009) and The Practice of Patriarchy: Gender and the Politics of Household Authority in Early Modern France.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Introduction A Foundling's Garter and the World of Young People's Intimacy

Ch.. 1. Sourcing Intimate Histories: The Social World of Young Workers

Ch. 2. Peril Stories: Licit Intimacy, Space, and Community Safeguarding

Ch. 3. Holding Men Responsible: Fertility, Community, and Court

Ch. 4. "Remedies" and Remedies: Managing Out-of-Wedlock Pregnancy

Ch. 5. Intimate Labor: Paid Work and an Intimate Economy of Reproduction

Ch. 6. Foundlings and Makeshift Coffins: Community Complicity and Dead Babies

Conclusion: The End of the Old Regime?

Notes

Bibliography

Index

More info here

CALL FOR PAPERS: Local Administration during the First and Second World Wars (Prague, 2-4 September 2020) (DEADLINE: 17 March 2020)

(Source: Pol-Int)

We learned of a call for papers for a conference in Prague on local administrations during the two world wars. Here the call:

Local administration has always played a key role in securing, implementing and stabilizing the authority of the modern state. After the outbreak of the First World War, the warring countries were confronted with a difficult supply situation, including famine, disease, refugees and labor shortages. The clerks of the local administration were responsible for implementing new policies and solving problems. They were the ones in direct contact with local populations which were often multi-ethnic and presented a broad variety of needs.

In many cases, local administrations were reorganized to deal with vast and unprecedented tasks and problems. In other cases, the German Empire and Austria-Hungary established military occupation administrations which depended on existing local administration, for example in Belgium, Serbia and Ukraine.

Not only military defeat but also the failure of overtaxed local administrations to solve substantial problems such as obtaining sufficient food supplies for the population led to revolts in the German Empire and the Habsburg Monarchy.

This drastic experience prompted Nazi Germany in particular to undertake a reorganization of local administration shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War. Even after large parts of Europe were under German occupation, local administrations remained largely responsible for the daily life needs of local populations, such as organizing production, distribution and rationing of food and other basic goods, such as heating fuel and clothing. Since state food allotments were often insufficient to meet basic needs, local populations reacted with the development of a variety of illegal practices. Farmers evaded compulsory levies of food and sold undocumented, illegally butchered meat. Hidden stores of products, food and ration stamps were traded for other goods as part of a comprehensive black market. Although nominally supervised by German occupiers, the actual prosecution of these new economic crimes generally fell in the responsibility of local administrations and courts. Local courts continued to hear non-political cases and disputes within local populations as well.

Recent research in Holocaust Studies have showed that local administrations not only played an important role in making the mass murder of the European Jews possible, but that it was often local administrations that took the initiative.

This conference aims to bring together scholars who work on specific aspects of local administration in the First World War and the Second World War and analyze and compare a diversity of methodologies, findings and approaches.

We are particularly interested in papers that are dealing with the following historical focuses:

- The relationship between the occupying power and local administration.
- Local administration and the war economy
- Local courts under occupation
- Continuity and change in staffing aspects of local administration under occupation
- Questions of local administration and local interpretation of collaboration

Prof. Jonathan Gumz will give a keynote address on local administration and the First World War.

Prof. Dieter Pohl will give a keynote address on local administration and the Second World War.

At the moment we are able to cover accommodation and parts of the travel costs, we are still looking for funds for travel costs.

The conference language is English.

Please send your abstracts of approximately 500 words by 17 March 2020 to:

• E-Mail: vondracek@mua.cas.cz
• URL: https://www.mua.cas.cz/

(Source: Pol-Int.org)

BOOK: Jeannette KAMP, Crime, Gender and Social Control in Early Modern Frankfurt Am Main (Leiden-New York: Brill, 2020). ISBN 978-90-04-38844-4, €121.00

(Source: Brill)

Brill is publishing a new book on crime, gender and social control in Early Modern Frankfurt am Main.

ABOUT THE BOOK

This book charts the lives of (suspected) thieves, illegitimate mothers and vagrants in early modern Frankfurt. The book highlights the gender differences in recorded criminality and the way that they were shaped by the local context. Women played a prominent role in recorded crime in this period, and could even make up half of all defendants in specific European cities. At the same time, there were also large regional differences. Women’s crime patterns in Frankfurt were both similar and different to those of other cities. Informal control within the household played a significant role and influenced the prosecution patterns of authorities. This impacted men and women differently, and created clear distinctions within the system between settled locals and unsettled migrants.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jeannette Kamp, Ph.D. (1986), is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Oxford. She has previously published an edited volume with Matthias van Rossum Desertion in the Early Modern World (2016).

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Front Matter

Free access

Copyright

Free access

Acknowledgements

Restricted Access

Introduction

Pages: 1–31

A Multi-Layered Legal System: Criminal Justice in Early Modern Frankfurt

Pages: 32–58

Gender and Recorded Crime: Long-Term Patterns and Developments

Pages: 59–85

Restricted Access

Transcending Dichotomies: Gender, Property Offending and the ‘Open House’

Pages: 86–155

Between Control and Agency? The Prosecution of Sexual Offences

Pages: 156–210

Transgressing Social Order: Mobile Men and Women

Pages: 211–274

Conclusions

Pages: 275–286

More info here

BOOK : Miguel Ángel CHAMOCHO CANTUDO and Tiphaine LE YONCOURT, eds., La naissance de la justice administrative locale des conseils de préfecture français aux conseils de province espagnols (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2018). ISBN 978-2-7535-7423-6, € 30,00.

(Source: Presses Universitaires de Rennes)

Presses Universitaires de Rennes has just published a new book on local administrative judicial organs in France, Spain and Italy in the 19^th century.

ABOUT THE BOOK

Produit d’une collaboration entre historiens du droit, historiens, administrativistes et politologues espagnols, italiens et français, cet ouvrage étudie les conseils locaux instaurés dans ces pays dans la première moitié du XIXe siècle pour juger les contentieux administratifs. Il replace les conseils de préfecture dans une histoire longue, étudie les débats doctrinaux que leurs installations, leurs réussites et échecs ont fait naître dans chaque pays et les évolutions législatives différentes qu’ils y ont connues. Il observe enfin leurs rôles, pratiques institutionnelles et politiques propres afin de les replacer dans l’histoire de leurs systèmes administratifs respectifs.

ABOUT THE EDITORS

Miguel Ángel Chamocho Cantudo est professeur d’histoire du droit à l’université de Jaèn, Espagne, et membre de l’IODE (UMR CNRS 6262). Auteur de nombreuses publications et ouvrages sur l’histoire du droit espagnol, il s’est spécialisé ces dernières années dans l’étude des institutions et du droit comparés entre la France et l’Espagne.

Tiphaine Le Yoncourt est maître de conférences en histoire du droit à l’université de Rennes 1 et membre de l’IODE (UMR CNRS 6262). Spécialisée dans l’étude de l’histoire de l’administration française et de son droit, elle a notamment publié avec Grégoire Bigot, L’administration française. Politique, droit et société. 1870-1944, Paris, LexisNexis, 2014 et L’idée de fonds juridique commun dans l’Europe du XIXe siècle, Rennes, PUR, 2014 avec Anthony Mergey et Sylvain Soleil.

The Table of Contents can be found here

More information with the publisher  

CONFERENCE: "Località e Storia locale: una tavola rotonda" (Rome, 2 October 2014)

WHAT: "Località e Storia locale: una tavola rotonda", Conference and roundtable on the book "Luoghi. La produzione di località in età moderna e contemporanea", by Angelo Torre

WHERE: Rome, Biblioteca del Senato della Repubblica "Giovanni Spadolini", Sala degli atti parlamentari, piazza della Minerva, 38.

WHEN: 2 October 2014, 3:00 pm

All information here

Speakers

Marco Meriggi, Simona Feci, Osvaldo Raggio, Emanuele Conte, Angelo Torre, Sandro Bulgarelli, Luca Giana, Diego Moreno, Emanuele Colombo, Massimo Vallerani

La tavola rotonda si articola in due sessioni e prende spunto dalla presenza presso la sede della Biblioteca di un fondo speciale detto di "Storia locale".

Nella prima sessione verrà ripresa la discussione storiografica sul tema della località, a partire da una serie di interventi sul libro di Angelo Torre "Luoghi. La produzione di località in età moderna e contemporanea", Donzelli, Roma 2011.

La località è un ambito territoriale di pratiche condivise - modi di fare, di lavorare, di scambiare - che creano dei diritti. Il loro godimento sta alla base di ciò che chiamiamo appartenenza, mentre la loro messa in discussione causa conflitti e dispute che rappresentano le fonti storiche principali per lo studio dei luoghi.

Il libro esamina una successione di casi giudiziari relativi all'Italia nord-occidentale e a un tempo compreso fra il XVI secolo e i giorni nostri.

La seconda parte sarà invece dedicata ad una ricostruzione del dibattito storiografico degli ultimi anni intorno allo statuto della storia locale in Italia, con il proposito di mettere a confronto differenti prospettive interdisciplinari di analisi.

L'incontro, che intende inaugurare una serie di appuntamenti annuali dedicati al tema della storia locale, è curato ed introdotto da Vittorio Tigrino e Raissa Teodori, e promosso dalla redazione della rivista "Quaderni Storici".