Bram De Ridder (°1989) is a postdoctoral researcher who studied history at the University of Leuven and international relations at the University of Cambridge. In his current project, drafted during a visiting scholarship at Harvard University, he studies the uses of history in contemporary border management. In 2016 he defended his Ph.D. titled ‘Lawful Limits. Border Management and the Formation of the Habsburg-Dutch Boundary, ca. 1590-1665’, wherein he investigated the emergence of the border between the Habsburg Netherlands and the Dutch Republic during and after the Eighty Years War. More particularly, his research focused on the different political and legal strategies by which different early modern actors shaped the territorial separations that divided them. In earlier projects he focused on the Act of Cession and the initiatives for peace at the beginning of the Archducal regime in the Habsburgs Netherlands (1598-1600), and on the connections between the Pax Hispanica (1598-1609) and the notion of International Society.
Recent publications:
B. De Ridder, The institutionalization of Habsburg-Dutch border controls during the Eighty Years War, Philostrato. Revista de historia y arte, extraordinary nr. (2018), p. 55-76. Link to article.
B. De Ridder, ‘Early Modern Peace and International Society: Using Disciplinary Hybridity to Question the Pax Hispanica (1598-1618)’, in: The International History Review, published online (2016). Link to article
B. De Ridder,‘Benchmarking the Past: Politico-Legal Connotations of Tradition, Custom and Common Practice in the Diplomacy of the Eighty Years War’, in: Dutch Crossing: Journal of Low Countries Studies, published online (2016). Link to article
B. De Ridder, ‘Sustaining the Munster Peace: The Chambre Mi-Partie as an Experiment in Transnational Border Arbitration (1648-1675)’, in: Journal of Modern European History, 14.1 (2016), 35-53. Link to article.
B. De Ridder, ‘Rusland, de Krim en het hernieuwde belang van territoriale claims’, in: Internationale Spectator: Tijdschrift voor Internationale Politiek, 68:10 (2014), 37-41.
B. De Ridder and V. Soen, ‘The Act of Cession, the 1598 and 1600 States-Generals in Brussels and the peace negotiations during the Dutch Revolt’, in R. Lesaffer (ed.), The Twelve Years Truce (1609): Peace, Truce, War and Law in the Low Countries at the Turn of the 17th Century (Studies in the History of International Law, 5), Leiden, Boston: Brill/Nijhoff, 2014, 48-68.
B. De Ridder and T. Vermeersch, ‘Grensstudies in de Zwinstreek. De studie en ontsluiting van een historisch grensland’, in: Tijd-Schrift. Heemkunde en lokaal-erfgoedpraktijk in Vlaanderen, 4.1 (2014), 60-74.
B. De Ridder, ‘Frans-Vlaanderen als grensland tussen het koninkrijk Frankrijk en het graafschap Vlaanderen’, Romaneske, 38 (2013), 2-9.
B. De Ridder, ‘De Akte van Afstand als pacificatiestrategie tijdens de Nederlandse Opstand (1597-1600)’, in: Handelingen van de Koninklijke Zuid-Nederlandse Maatschappij voor Taal-, Letterkunde en Geschiedenis, 65 (2012), 209-221.
Contact details:
E-mail: bram.deridder@kuleuven.be
Adress: KU Leuven, Onderzoeksgroep Nieuwe Tijd, Blijde Inkomststraat 21 bus 3307, B-3000 Leuven.