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Project

Sabbatical Violet Soen: Towards Transregional History 2.0

Over the past decade, Transregional History: Crossing Borders in Early Modern Times has grown into a thriving research group on the critical role of borders and border areas during the sixteenth-century religious wars between Protestants and Catholics. The second cohort of PhD students is now investigating the role of universities and their printing press in the transregional transfers from the early modern period.  In February 2021 the last part of the planned trilogy Transregional Reformations (Vandenhoeck&Ruprecht, 2019), Transregional Territories (Brepols, Habsburg Worlds, 2020) and Noblesses transrégionales (Brepols, Burgundica, 2021) is released.
In the future, Transregional History 2.0 wants to integrate the recent developments in the field of spatial history and explore new horizons in the field of linked places, linked pasts.
This sabbatical period will serve to explore new methods (particularly the Harvard open software 'Worldmap') and thereby determine the possible potential for research into the sixteenth century. Central to this is the search for compatible data transfer and visualization for the three current (and largely already online) databases Impressa Catholica Cameracensia, Impressae and Manuale Lovaniense, which now have almost 10,000 records.
This sabbatical is not only for looking ahead, but also for deepening. Work will also be done on an English-language monograph, which will provide insights from the various sub-projects. Based on an aristocratic family with cross-border ambitions, this monograph argues how the religious wars in the Netherlands and France often were sent decisively from the border areas. Remaining archival work in Douai and Paris delayed by COVID will be overtaken by short stays during the sabbatical period in France.

Date:1 Aug 2021 →  31 Jan 2022
Keywords:transregional history, historical methodology, spatial history
Disciplines:Early modern history, Historical theory and methodology not elsewhere classified