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The Platform of Markets and Corporations at Utrecht ľ�ϸ���Ӱ�� is happy to announce another series of informal platform meetings, which will be organised for several months to come. The first meeting in the series will be on Monday 7 December, from 16:00 until 17:00, via Microsoft Teams. During this meeting, Dr. Christophe Schellekens will provide a lecture on ideas, innovations, and commercial institutions in a ‘closing’ society: lessons from Florence in the long sixteenth century.

Christophe: “Older historical narratives on the evolution of “Western Civilization” have given a prominent place to Renaissance Florence. The city has been presented as a breeding ground for new ideas in the field of political philosophy, as well as for new techniques and organizational structures in the field of business. That scholarship has focused primarily on the republican period (pre-1527). The understudied “forgotten centuries” (1527-1800) after the shift from a republican to a ducal regime have long been represented as an era of political authoritarianism and of economic stagnation."

Florentine merchants in Antwerp

"My presentation will discuss some insights and findings from my own research on the relation between Florentine merchants in Antwerp and their city of origin. I will present my work as part of a recent body of new and innovative scholarship on Florence during this period. I will also reflect on the added value of two bodies of scholarship from the social sciences in understanding this period: work on the role of institutions (extractive vs. open access) and scholarship on the embeddedness of economic activity.”

is lecturer in Social and Economic History at Utrecht ľ�ϸ���Ӱ��, and holds a PhD from the Department of History and Civilization at the European ľ�ϸ���Ӱ�� Institute. He also serves as part-time as the coordinator of the Horizon 2020 project , for which he is affiliated to KU Leuven (Belgium).