Klaas Van Gelder

Biography

Klaas Van Gelder studied history at Ghent University where he obtained his MA in 2005 and completed his PhD on the establishment of the Austrian rule in the 18th-century southern Netherlands in 2012. As a postdoctoral researcher, he specialised in the political history of the Austrian Habsburg Monarchy (FWO/Ghent University), with special interests in ritual and ceremony, network analysis, representation, revolts, and other forms of political participation. He held a Friedrich Plaschka-fellowship (Österreichischer Austauschdienst) at the University of Vienna in 2014, and a Lise Meitner-fellowship (Austrian Research Foundation FWF) at the same institution from 2016 until 2018. From 2019 until 2021 he lectured both at Ghent University and at University of Antwerp. He joined Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) in October 2021 as a 50% assistant professor within the framework of the FED-tWIN program ACCESS (Belspo). He combines this with a half-time appointment as archivist at the State Archives in Brussels (Vorst/Forest). His current research focuses on the social history of the law in early modern Europe, with a particular emphasis on the immense collection of registers and case files from the Council of Brabant, the highest law court in the eponymous duchy from the early 15th until the late 18th century. From October to December 2024, he was a visiting scholar at Saint Mary's University in Halifax, Canada.