Three PhD Candidates in Legal History

[We have the following announcement from Tilburg University, via IAMEXPAT.  DRE.)

The Department of Public Law and Governance (PLG) is looking for 3 PhD Candidates who will be working within the project ‘Causal Pattern Analysis of Economic Sovereignty’ (CaPANES), which is funded by the European Research Council (ERC, ERC Consolidator Grant 2021, nr 101044356). PLG is a large, diverse and interdisciplinary department, home to nearly 100 academic staff and a range of legal and social science disciplines. You will develop and grow in research, both individually and as part of a team of ambitious scholars.

As PhD Candidate in legal history, you will analyze the historical use of sovereignty concepts in cities of commerce. The CaPANES project hypothesizes that in the early modern period cities of commerce, even within states, had foreign relations of their own and made strategic use of legal terms that defined their economic sovereignty. The CaPANES project pursues legal-historical analysis of both the domestic context of cities of commerce and of their interactions with other cities and states. The CaPANES combines qualitative and quantitative methods (social network analysis, modelling), and aims to yield conclusions that are relevant also for discussions on present-day economic sovereignty. The PhD Candidates will analyze the law, institutions and correspondence of six cities of commerce (Florence, Toulouse, Rouen, Bruges, Southampton and Lübeck). The first PhD position is concerned with Bruges and Southampton (c. 1400-c. 1520), the second PhD position with Rouen and Lübeck (c. 1450-c. 1620) and the third one with Florence and Toulouse (c. 1400-c. 1550). 20% of the appointment may be dedicated to teaching and/or administration.