Title Promoter Affiliations Abstract "The Social and Economic History of Central Africa: Beyond Capitalism and Colonialism." "Tim Soens" "Development processes, actors and policies, Centre for Urban History" "This postdoc merges the expertise in European social and economic history of the Centre for Urban History (CSG) with the expertise on development in Central Africa within the Institute of Development Policy (IOB). It is part of a broader research ambition of the two research groups, joint together in the AIPRIL-research platform, which will eventually culminate in a new TT-ZAP BOF 'Social and Economic History of Central Africa'. Profiting from the post-2000 boom in African economic history and answering the urgent call in Belgian society for more engagement with the history of Central Africa, this post-doc project meets the challenge of building interdisciplinary capacity between IOB and CSG. In line with the research expertise of both research groups, the unique selling proposition of this proposal is the study of diverging social and economic trajectories in Central Africa. We look for a researcher who shall investigate and help to explain long-term regional divergences, for instance in urban development, wellbeing, inequality-levels, political arrangements, health, demography, financial inclusion, etc. over the past centuries. By looking at regional divergences within and between the present-day countries of DR Congo, Rwanda, and Burundi, long-term path-dependencies as well as historical contingencies can be revealed, some of which were shaped by the experience of colonialism, others might date back to the pre-colonial period, or only originated over the past decades. Mapping and interpreting these regional differences helps to move away from homogenizing explanatory schemes such as capitalism and colonialism, and offers essential insights in the causes of prosperity or decline. Finally, embedded in such regional approach a lot of innovative research at the level of individual actors becomes possible, for instance studying the strategies and trajectories of households and individuals, as well as their capability to deal with adversities or to seize opportunities in life." "Wine, villa landscapes and cities: the impact of Roman colonialism on the central Adriatic coastal regions of Italy" "Frank Vermeulen" "Department of Archaeology" "Today wine in Italy is so much a part of the country’ culture, its economy and the way of life. This goes back to Antiquity when first Greeks and Etruscans strongly promoted the product as colonists and traders, and later when Rome modeled the whole peninsula, and after that the Western World, to its image and lifestyle. Under Roman dominion wine became crucially important to the global economy. Its impact on consumption habits and trade, but also on patterns of colonialism through the period of expansion, was enormous. This project aims to disentangle the complex relationship between Roman colonialism, elite investment in wine production and commerce, and the urban and rural landscape changes which these developments brought about. The research is confined to the territories of the Roman colonies on the central Adriatic coast and to the Republican phases of the Romanization of this part of Italy (3rd-1st centuries B.C.). By combining original fieldwork, with focused studies of archaeological finds and the literature, the project aims to understand some of the complex processes triggered by the production and trade in wine in that period and region. Through the interplay of different methodological approaches within the disciplines of ancient topography, landscape studies and ceramology, the project will investigate the important role of wine in engaging Roman colonists and local peoples of Adriatic Italy in intricate webs of economic, cultural and political relations." "Secularism, colonialism and the Enlightenment: European toleration and the rise of fundamentalism in South Asia" "Balagangadhara Rao" "Department of Comparative sciences of culture" "Research hypotheses: the proposed research will build on three hypotheses that resulted from earlier research on the development of the liberal model of secularism and toleration: (1) The basic structure of this model fails to be neutral with regard to all religions, because it is conceptually dependent upon a Protestant framework, namely, the theology of Christian liberty and its U+2018two kingdomsU+2019.(2) The policy of religious toleration and neutrality of the British colonial state in India developed within this basic theological structure.(3) Hence, in colonial India, this model of secularism and toleration lies at the origin of the rise of Hindu fundamentalism. This leads me to new research questions and hypotheses." "An Archaeology of Comparative Colonialism: material culture, institutions, and cultural change in Malta, c. AD 1530–1910" "Wim De Clercq" "Department of Archaeology" "The project aims to produce a novel, material culture-led narrative of daily life in Malta, AD 1530-1910. Archaeological analyses of artefacts and space shall be integrated with archival evidence to produce a social interpretation, which shall be viewed through the prisms of colonial institutions and identity formation. The project culminates in a diachronic comparison of colonialism under three ruling groups." "Speculative and Creative Methodologies for Historical Counter-Narratives: Spatial Archive, Scenographic Practice and Fictioning" "Kris PINT" "Media, Arts and Design, ArcK" "Perceiving classical historical discourses as constructed narratives of colonialist, imperialist and patriarchal ideologies, this project considers their fictionality as an opportunity to explore and construct alternative historical narratives or counter-narratives. My interest lies in minor narratives and stories, found in the liminal areas of historical records and their leftovers (dreams, visions, rumors, etc.). They allow me to re-frame hierarchical epistemological structures and open new possibilities for critical thinking. This project focuses on diverse historical characters, which operated outside the discourses of power, and were seen as troublemakers or antiheroes, among them Sappho, Mikhail Bakunin, St. Thecla, Mary Anning, Emanuel Swedenborg, Michel Leiris, and others. Yet, these people pursued visionary endeavors that inspired later generations for cultural and political change. This transdisciplinary artistic research project is informed by historical, ethnographic, scenographic, and literary theories, methods and practices. The strategies guiding my research will be imaginative engagement, fictioning, counter-narration and autohistoria. The outcome of this project will be a combination of scenographies, installations, performances as well as academic and artistic publications. As the main outcome, I propose to create a spatial archive of historical figures, a scenographic arrangement in which the mistreated figures and stories are rethought" "The politics of publishing; researching encounters between artists' books and intersectional feminist tools." "Diana Arbaiza" "Karel de Grote Hogeschool, Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)" "My research project addresses artists' books and the politics of publishing, creating forms to uncover forgotten histories in this field, through a critical design approach which includes feminist tools. I will work on a series of hybrid publications (paper, digital, spatial, oral) to re·activate objects and histories and re·circulate them. The goal of the research project is to make untold narratives visible and activate the relation with historical, present and initiatives and narratives. How to tell these stories: through individual figures, groups of people, through objects? How to fill in the blanks — address the things that disappeared and integrate them? How to archive and transmit these stories? How to shift the traditional focus on monographic objects to collective ones, from books to ""ephemeras""? The artistic context of this research is that of artists' books and artistic publishing. The theoretical context is art history, and more specifically the history of artists' books, as well as gender and postcolonial studies. The political context is that of activists working to shape the way we deal with knowledge and history (depatriarchising and de-colonialising). The research methodology is built on critical, research-based design methods. Throughout, intersectional feminist (design) tools will be used, notably an attention to who speaks for whom, in order to find a balance between speaking about/for and letting the primary source speak." "Changing grounds. Free and unfree coffee-growing labour in the Dutch East Indies and Belgian Congo, 1870-1960." "Eric Vanhaute" "Department of History" "Today, coffee is the world’ second most valuable legal commodity and the most widely consumed psychoactive drug. It also provides a livelihood to 20 million workers in 70 countries. Much has been written about the history of coffee, from its discovery in Abyssinia to the ubiquity of Starbucks. The impact of the introduction of colonial coffee production on labour relations is however a highly understudied field. This project will contribute to the development of a new perspective on the transformation of colonial labour systems, by focusing on the interaction between colonial production systems and local rural societies. The project explores two coffee frontiers in two different continents in the period 1870-1960. In response to the ascendency of coffee as a mass commodity, new zones of coffee cultivation emerged in Asia and Africa. Two of these zones, the North-West (Equateur) of Belgian Congo and Java and West Sumatra in the Netherlands Indies, will be studied by a single set of research questions. They focus on a/ the interaction between large scale (plantations) and small scale (smallholders) production systems, b/ the mobilisation and employment of labour and c/ the strategies of rural populations to keep control over their resources. This comparative project will provide new insights into the way labour relations changed in different parts of the world in the times of ‘igh colonialism’in response to the pressures and incentives of the global commodity market."