Bridging Data Science and Intellectual History : Knowledge Networks in and around the Old University of Louvain (1425-1797)
(2026)
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- This doctoral dissertation studies early modern scholarly communities through the lens of networks: academic networks on the one hand, and publishing networks on the other. It sits at the intersection of computational history and quantitative economic history, and attempts to operate a synthesis between the two disciplinary approaches. The Old University of Louvain (1425-1797) serves as both the anchoring case study and the point of departure for a wider regional and European inquiry. Using a novel infrastructure combining historical data on academic scholars and library catalogues spanning almost three centuries, the dissertation develops five chapters investigating how knowledge production in premodern Europe was organised through the interaction of shared affiliation and material networks. Chapters 1 and 2 reconstruct the Louvain intellectual network and situate the approach relative to existing traditions in the humanities and the social sciences. Chapter 3 widens the scope to the European level and uses the affiliation network binding scholars across the continent as the vector for the spread of new ideas. Chapter 4 returns to Louvain and compares the partnerships and publishing networks of five notable printers active in the city in different periods. Chapter 5 settles on the historic Low Countries and tackles a classical economic question, examining whether printers and publishers leaned on accumulated social ties to screen unfamiliar authors, and how far that reliance intensified during the institutional disruption that marked the region from the first stirrings of the Reformation onward.
- Affiliations
KU Leuven Faculteit Letteren
Citations
Scebba, R. (2026). Bridging Data Science and Intellectual History : Knowledge Networks in and around the Old University of Louvain (1425-1797). https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/281532