Biography
Jim van der Meulen (1987) started as a PhD-candidate at the University of Antwerp in 2013. In November 2017 he successfully defended his thesis. The book based on that research, entitled Woven into the Urban Fabric: Cloth Manufacture and Economic Development in the Flemish West-Quarter (1300-1600), appeared in 2022 in the book series Studies in European Urban History (1100-1800) of Brepols Publishers. He subsequently worked as post-doctoral researcher at Ghent University on the ERC-project ‘Lordship and the Rise of States in Western Europe, 1300-1600’. Within the scope of that project, he published articles in Continuity and Change and the Low Countries Journal of Social and Economic History (TSEG) among others. Between 2021 and 2022 he worked as post-doctoral Research Associate for the University of Oxford, on the project ‘Recovering Europe’s Parliamentary Culture, 1500-1700’. Since October 2022 he works as post-doctoral researcher and as co-supervisors on the project ‘Lordship and Agrarian Capitalism in the Low Countries, 1350-1650’ at Ghent University (with Frederik Buylaert, Thijs Lambrecht en Dirk Heirbaut). Since September 2022 he has also started a position as guest researcher affiliated with the REPUBLIC-project of the Huygens Institute. His personal project is to create an inventory of so-called ‘parliamentary diaries’, i.e. personal notes pertaining to sessions of the Dutch States General, in the period of c.1588-c.1702. From January 2023 he will be part of the editorial board of Virtus – Journal of Nobility Studies.
His research focuses on the Low Countries (north and south) in the period 1300-1700. In his research, he combines themes and insights from socio-economic, political, and cultural history.
Most important publications:
- Woven into the Urban Fabric. Cloth Manufacture and Economic Development in the Flemish West-Quarter (1300-1600), Studies in European Urban History 54 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022).
- ‘Seigneurial Governance and the State in Late Medieval Guelders (14th-16th Centuries)’, Continuity and Change 36 (2021), 33-59.
- ‘Corporate Collective Action and the Market Cycle of the Cloth Industry in Nieuwkerke, Flanders, 1300-1600’, Social History 43 (2018), 375-399.
- ‘Bargaining River Lords. Lordship and Spatial Politics in Premodern Guelders (15th-16th Centuries)’, TSEG – The Low Countries Journal of Social and Economic History 39 (2021), 39-71.
- ‘Early Modern Parliamentary Studies: Overview and New Perspectives’, History Compass (onvoorwaardelijke geaccepteerd) (met Paulina Kewes, Steven Gunn, Dorota Pietrzyk-Reeves, Paul Seaward and Tracey Sowerby).
