Centre for the Pre-Industrial Production Processes and Labour Relations

The last few years historical research focuses on guilds: the social, economical, political and cultural functions of guilds in urban industries during the Modern Period. Empirical study concentrates on the Spanish and Austrian Netherlands, especially on the duchy of Brabant and the county of Flanders. A comparative and long-term approach is designed to place guilds in a new perspective, related with the growing international intrest of this topic. PIPA also is the core-unit of the research group 'Labour, Labour Relations and Labour Markets, 1500-2000' (Fund of Scientific Research Flanders). This research group is a network of twenty research units from seventeen different scientific institutions from Belgium (VUB, UG, KUL, UFSIA, ULB), the Netherlands (IISG Amsterdam, KU Nijmegen, RU Utrecht), the United Kingdom (U. Cambridge, U. Essex, London School of Economics and Political Science), France (Lille III), Austria (U. Salzburg), Germany (MLU Halle), Italy (UdS Bologna), Spain (UA Madrid) and the USA (Cornell) ). The aims of this international network are: to further interdisciplinary and international co-operation agreements among scholars, in the study of the changes that have occurred in labour processes, labour relations and labour markets since the sixteenth century, with special reference to periods of global societal transformation and urban wage-earners and self-employed artisans or shopkeepers. Western Europe is the core area.