Postdoctoral Researcher at the Leiden Institute for History

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label Burse autorenew 2025-09-29, 17:01 history_edu Diana Ignat
Postdoctoral Researcher at the Leiden Institute for History within the project Fighting Monopolies, Defying Empires 1500-1750: a Comparative Overview of Free Agents and Informal Empires in Western Europe and the Ottoman Empire Faculty of Humanities Institute for History, Economic and Social History Section Post-Doc Position (30,4 hours per week)

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From June 1, 2013, the Economic and Social History Section, Institute for History of the Faculty of Humanities at Leiden University will be appointing a postdoctoral researcher, for four years, within the ERC funded Starting Grant project Fighting Monopolies, Defying Empires.

This comparative project will answer the general question: how did free agents in Western Europe and the Ottoman Empire react to the creation of colonial monopolies (royal monopolies and chartered companies) by central states in the Early Modern period?



This collective project will answer this question by looking at the role individuals played in the construction of what has been called ‘informal empires’, which are understood as a multitude of self-organized networks operating world-wide, who had as their main goal the safeguarding of their personal, social and economic advantages, regardless of (and in spite of) state intervention.

This postdoctoral position is situated within a team of thirteen researchers directly and indirectly involved in the project. Team members are expected to work together by openly sharing questions, hypotheses and results and by participating in candid discussions of each others’ work.

The Economic and Social History Section is a dynamic research group with broad interests, enthusiastic researchers and lecturers with outstanding track records and is successful in attracting national and international research grants.