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Colonial surgery in a time of medical reform : Wouter Schouten in the Dutch Golden Age
No full textDefence date: 05 December 2025Examining Board: Prof. Lauren Kassell (European University Institute); Prof. Giorgio Riello (European University Institute); Prof. Dániel Margócsy (University of Cambridge); Dr Hannah Murphy (King’s College London)This thesis examines how the Dutch Republic’s colonial expansion reshaped the social world of early modern medicine through a microhistory of the life and writings of Wouter Schouten (1638–1704), a ship surgeon who served the Dutch East India Company before returning to his native city of Haarlem. In colonial settings, surgeons assumed tasks well beyond surgery’s theoretical bounds, stepping into roles of physicians and pharmacists alike. This practical colonial experience effectively rendered colonial surgeons as transversal medical practitioners and furnished returning surgeons, like Schouten, with new confidence to claim standing within the Republic’s civic and medical spheres. Back home, surgeons used print to translate colonial experience into civic and medical authority, challenging academic physicians’ efforts to regulate medicine in urban settings. Tracing the codification of colonial experiences and their instrumentalisation in regulatory claims for better medicine, this thesis focuses primarily on Schouten’s vast and diverse writings. These writings, and the role colonial surgeons played in urban medical politics more generally, unsettle standard historical narratives which frame the seventeenth century as an era of medical reform driven by Cartesian theory and universitytrained physicians. Rather than seeking drivers of change within university settings and philosophical debate, this thesis focuses on those medical practitioners responsible for medical practice in the colonies, namely, surgeons. Medical practice in colonial settings, this thesis argues, became a key point of reference as surgeons constructed their medical authority and civic identity. Surgeons sought to shape medical practice in the Dutch Republic by promoting medical theories and regulatory institutional structures that served their self-perception as the drivers of colonial medicine
Gender segregation in the labour market : could the stall come to an end?
No full textDefence date: 17 December 2025Examining Board: Prof. Herman G. van de Werfhorst (European University Institute, Supervisor); Prof. Arnout van de Rijt (European University Institute, Co-supervisor); Prof. Wiebke Schulz (Universität Bremen); Prof. Pia S. Schober (Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen)Gender segregation in the labour market is one of the drivers of the gender pay gap and thereby gender inequality more generally. However, gender segregation is not stable but changes over time. Following a phase of increased gender integration, especially since the 1970s, the long-lasting stall in gender integration since the 1990s remains a puzzle. Many studies have investigated potential causes of this stall. This thesis broadens this field of research by examining what might contribute to an increase in gender integration again. First, the skilled labour shortage seems to contribute to gender integration in the German labour market. Second, occupational closure, measured with the concentration of educational certificates, excludes men from female-dominated occupations, but includes women in male-dominated occupations. Due to the skilled labour shortage, occupations seem to reduce occupational closure, which leads to an integration of men but a segregation of women. Third, specific types of intergenerational (im)mobility are associated with gender integration at the societal level. Generally, all three empirical chapters show that it is essential to consider both the roles of women and men to understand gender integration in the labour market. After in particular women advanced gender integration in the previous decades, men now seem to contribute to an increase in gender integration
Popularizing the neoliberal utopia : American libertarian fiction and the quest to design a liberal vision of the future, 1930s to 1960s
No full textDefence date: 14 February 2025Examining Board: Prof. Nicolas Guilhot (European University Institute, supervisor); Prof. Glenda Sluga (European University Institute); Prof. Quinn Slobodian (Boston University); Prof. Duncan Bell (University of Cambridge)How did utopian desire come to justify political violence? And could the imagination of a better world be salvaged from totalitarian tendencies? These were prominent concerns of early neoliberal thinkers amidst the ideological turmoil of the interwar period. Intellectuals such as Friedrich A. Hayek, Karl Popper, and Ludwig von Mises were aware that the renewal of the liberal creed they proposed had to include a positive vision of the future—a counterutopia that could match the appeal of the socialist and fascist ideals they sought to combat. Current scholarship, understanding neoliberalism as an intellectual movement that called for the transformation of state and society to benefit the working of free markets, has so far neglected these cultural questions. This dissertation returns to the roots of the neoliberal movement from the 1930s to the 1960s. It examines what role utopian culture played for its earliest proponents, how neoliberals used popular culture to make their ideas accessible to wider audiences, and ultimately, how the ideas of European neoliberals transformed when they arrived in the United States during the Second World War. To go beyond canonical neoliberal theory, this thesis presents three popular writers as case studies of neoliberal literary populism in the United States: Henry Hazlitt, Ayn Rand, and Robert A. Heinlein. These authors worked with speculative fiction to promote a utopia of the markets, embedded into the longer iconography of Americana and influenced by their direct or indirect contact with the “neoliberal thought collective.” Their fiction fostered an originalist reading of neoliberal economics that would come to shape the nascent libertarian movement in the US. Following their intellectual biographies, this thesis broadens the understanding of the neoliberal movement to include minor intellectuals and popularizers. It further suggests a starting point for a genuinely historical understanding of what constitutes neoliberal culture
The EU’s democratic self-defence : a reflexive approach
No full textDefence date: 01 December 2025
Examining Board: Prof. Martijn Hesselink (European University Institute, supervisor); Prof. Gráinne de Búrca (European University Institute); Prof. Neil Walker (University of Edinburgh); Prof. Anthoula Malkopoulou (Uppsala University)Increasing democratic regression across Europe has spurred calls for the EU to become a guardian of democratic principles, amongst other reasons to preserve its own political legitimacy. The phenomenon that can be understood as the EU’s democratic self-defence raises a number of normative and legal questions. In the literature, militant democracy has become a prominent concept for approaching these questions. However, this thesis argues that we should not conceive the EU’s democratic self-defence, and the corresponding legal and political instruments for this purpose, exclusively through the lens of militant democracy. Instead, it proposes the theory of reflexive democracy and the spectrum of democratic self-defence – ranging from militant to promotional measures – as a more consistent normative and conceptual framework for the EU’s democratic self-defence. Grounded in the political philosophy of Rainer Forst on justice, democracy and toleration, reflexive democracy establishes a number of normative requirements for a polity’s democratic self-defence and the permissible legal and political means for this purpose. Reflexive democracy illustrates how the idea of democratic self-defence can be meaningfully translated to the transnational polity of the EU – whose legal and political authority is dispersed over multiple levels of government, and whose democratic legitimacy is contested. This thesis argues that the legitimacy for the EU to defend (its own) democracy derives from understanding it as a democratic-striving polity, whose political defence must be conceived of as a relational endeavour that includes all levels of the multi-level polity. Moreover, through the lens of reflexive democracy and its intermediate principles (legality, proportionality and due process), this thesis reveals how various EU instruments for defending democracy threaten to harm democracy at the same time. In this light, it calls for recasting the EU’s democratic self-defence as a decentralised, agency-oriented political project of ‘defending while democratising’ European democracy, co-authored by the people it claims to protect.Chapter 2 'Reflexive democracy', Chapter 3 'The EU’s democratic self-defence', Chapter 4 'The EU’s democratic self-defence' and Chapter 5 'The EU’s militant democracy instruments' of the PhD thesis draw upon earlier versions published as article 'Thinking EU militant democracy beyond the challenge of backsliding member states' (2022) in the journal 'European constitutional law review', article 'Walking a democratic tightrope : EU militant democracy and the infringement action against Lex Tusk' (2023) in the journal 'Verfassungsblatt' and article 'One step forward, two steps back : the EU's 'defence of democracy' package' (2023) in the journal 'Verfassungsblatt'
The industry of anachronism (re)producing the past in the immersive historical reconstructions in Fin-de-siècle London, Vienna, Budapest, and Paris
No full textDefence date: 30 October 2025Examining Board: Prof. Giorgio Riello (European University Institute, Supervisor); Prof. Pieter M. Judson (European University Institute); Prof. Ariane Fennetaux (Université Sorbonne Nouvelle); Prof. Matthew Rampley (Masaryk University)This doctoral research project examines the material culture of the standardized (re)production of references to the past, through the study of European historical reconstructions. These ephemeral attractions were constructed within the grounds of national and universal exhibitions. Consisting of the reconstruction of medieval or modern cities, including their streets, squares, houses and monuments, they were inhabited by craftsmen and performers dressed in period costumes who sought to replicate the daily lives of past inhabitants through their leisure and professional activities. This thesis examines four late nineteenth-century historical reconstructions in Western and Central Europe: London, Vienna, Budapest and Paris. The entrepreneurs designed their historical narrative around a national golden age, by incorporating historical figures, events and symbols that had already entered nineteenthcentury political, educational and recreational spheres. This thesis considers how the entrepreneurs and companies involved in historical reconstructions constructed, staged and reproduced the past through immersive experiences in order to convey their agenda to millions of visitors. The innovative nature of this research lies in its emphasis on material culture. Using a European comparative framework, I analyse how the material productions of fin-de-siècle cities reveal the processes of mass commodification of the past. Moreover, material sources shed light on the compression of time and space between the exhibition grounds and everyday practices outside these ephemeral historical reconstructions. These reconstructions were characterized by a constant renewal of their entertainment and consumption offerings. The selected companies adopted mass production methods, combining processes of standardization, reproducibility, and personalization, and the latest techniques in advertisements. The past was experienced as a 'novelty' which made anachronism omnipresent. It was precisely the perception of the temporal gap that enabled the public to better understand and engage with the past, integrating it into their worldview and practices
Of elections, festivities, and creatures : information about Poland-Lithuania in early modern Florence
No full textDefence date: 14 October 2025Examining Board: Prof. Giancarlo Casale (European University Institute, Supervisor); Prof. Anna Kalinowska (Institute of History, Polish Academy of Sciences, External Supervisor); Prof. Lauren Kassell (European University Institute); Prof. Brendan Dooley (University College Cork); Prof. Massimo Rospocher (Italian-German Historical Institute)This dissertation explores how the Medici court gathered and processed information about the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth during the reigns of Francesco I (1574–1587) and Ferdinando I (1587–1609). Situated within the field of the history of information, it traces the rise of the Medici information state. Drawing on manuscript materials from the Archivio di Stato di Firenze, alongside other archival collections from Bologna, Vienna, Kraków, and Rome, it investigates the channels through which information about the Commonwealth reached Florence, identifies key actors involved, and places the findings within the broader context of European networks. The first case study examines how political information related to Poland–Lithuania was accessed and used at the Medici court. It focuses on information flows regarding the royal elections of 1573, 1575, and 1587, highlighting the crucial roles played by Tuscan entrepreneurs active within the Commonwealth and resident ambassadors stationed at the Imperial court. It shows how this information was leveraged in managing relations between the Grand Duchy of Tuscany and the Holy Roman Empire. The second case study explores courtly information and its use in diplomacy, by investigating the activities and reports of an extraordinary Medici ambassador attending the wedding of Sigismund III Vasa and Constance of Austria. The third case examines the circulation of scientific information, focusing on the dissemination of descriptions of rare animals native to the Commonwealth. This case highlights a broader interest in the region at the Medici court and brings to light another set of actors who shaped information flows between Poland–Lithuania and Tuscany. In doing so, this dissertation expands the geographic scope of early modern information studies, which have primarily centred on Western polities or adopted global perspectives that often overlook Central and Eastern Europe. At the same time, it sheds new light on the relations between the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Grand Duchy of Tuscany and addresses a gap in Polish historiography concerning the place of Poland–Lithuania in the early modern information landscape. It also offers a historical lens through which to reflect on contemporary challenges of information gathering, credibility, and overload in our hyper-connected society
Through hardship, to the stars? : economic expectations and support for the European Union during the COVID-19 and Ukraine crises
No full textDefence date: 25 June 2025Examining Board: Prof. Anton Hemerijck (European University Institute, Supervisor); Prof. Liesbet Hooghe (European University Institute); Prof. Theresa Kuhn (University of Amsterdam); Prof. Ignacio Jurado (Carlos III University of Madrid)This thesis examines the evolving dynamics of attitudes towards the European Union (EU) amid two unprece dented, EU-wide crises: the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. I analyse the extent to which these shocks consolidated support for the EU both as a policymaker and as a political community, and whether new concerns emerging from these challenges recalibrated key determinants of individual EU attitudes. Drawing on the original ’Solidarity in Europe’ survey dataset, fielded annually between 2018 and 2023 across 16 EU member states, the study integrates observational, experimental and machine learning techniques to disentangle the impact of new economic and security concerns deriving from both crises on support for the EU. The theoretical framework revisits the postfunctionalist assertion of a ’constraining dissensus’ grounded on the tension between rapid EU jurisdictional changes and exclusionary national identities. Specifically, I present evidence that exogenous and symmetric crises with clear-cut economic ramifications may trigger a temporary attitudinal framework where expectations of economic insurance and prosperity against shared adversity and uncertainty become the most informative motivations underpinning individual EU support, overriding identity-based considerations that have hitherto been pivotal to EU atti tudes. Chapter 1 investigates the immediate aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic and the Ukrainian crisis, demonstrating that the most salient crisis-related personal concern — inflation — has been progressively linked to bolstered public demand for a more interventionist EU policymaking role. Chapter 2 zooms in on whether the COVID-19 pandemic shifted the determinants of support for EU solidarity, finding that net-benefit expectations from supranational redistribution outweigh cultural predispositions, underscoring the growing importance of material divides underpinning support for supranational redistribution. In Chapter 3, I test the explanatory value of economic, cultural and geopolitical drivers of EU attachment to find that expectations of economic benefit are the strongest correlates of EU attachment; experimental evidence aimed at testing the micro-mechanisms of domestic elite framing complements these findings, demonstrating that frames emphasising economic advantages from the Single Market are the most effective in mustering EU attachment, offsetting the negative effect of identity-centred Eurosceptic messages. Chapter i 4 investigates an erosion in EU attachment one year after the Ukraine invasion, especially amongst the biggest proponents of EU integration, indicating that initial rallying effects from the external, collective challenge posed by Russian expansionism may erode under prolonged inflationary conditions. Overall, this study offers nuanced insights into how common shocks reshape political attitudes, emphasising that urgent crisis pressures may open an avenue for sustained EU legitimacy - insofar as it is perceived to be responsive to both material challenges and public perceptions.Chapter 2 'A supranational solidaristic space? : comparative appraisal of determinants of individual support for European solidarity in the COVID-19 era' of the PhD thesis draws upon an earlier version published as an article 'A supranational solidaristic space? : comparative appraisal of determinants of individual support for European solidarity in the COVID-19 era' (2023) in the journal 'Comparative European Politics'
Intellectual activists in an age of revolutions : women's ideas and political practices in the Greek cultural space (1800-1830)
No full textDefence date: 17 January 2025Examining Board: Prof. Ann Thomson (European University Institute, supervisor ); Prof. Glenda Sluga (European University Institute); Prof. Konstantina Zanou (Columbia University); Prof. Ioannis Koubourlis (University of Crete)This thesis examines the writings and the political lives of women who were willingly or unwillingly identified as Greek at the time surrounding the Greek Revolution of 1821. As empires crumbled and geographies changed, women tried to reposition themselves in the political landscape. They were affected by the ideas of enlightenment and romanticism that were forming an interesting hybrid in the Southeastern Mediterranean. Sometimes they used the tools they already had in hand (salons, translation), while others they tried to reinvent what was possible for their sex (publication of original works, secret societies). As is often the case with female actors, despite the earnest efforts of Greek women’s historians, historiography has not acknowledged their importance. They have, in one way or the other, been omitted from all accounts, or when they are present, their role has been severely underplayed. In this thesis, I recover some of them who were completely lost while I recast the lives and role of others.Chapter 2 'The intellectual boundaries of material space: women’s writings on geography, the fatherland, patriotism, and the war' of the PhD thesis draws upon an earlier version published as an article 'Female Fatherlands: Women of Letters, Greek Patriotism and the Revolution of 1821' (2023) in the journal 'Historein'.
Chapter 1 and 3 'Voices of a Revolution: Women, Language, and Nationhood' and 'Agency and actions: salons, philhellenism, and secret societies' of the PhD thesis draws upon an earlier version published as an article 'Tracing the ‘Political’ in Women’s Work: Women of Letters in the Greek Cultural Space, 1800–1832' (2021) in the journal 'Journal of Modern Greek Studies'.
Chapter 1 'Voices of a Revolution: Women, Language, and Nationhood' of the PhD thesis draws upon an earlier version published as chapter 'Women of the Word: Translation and Political Activism in the Age of Revolutions' (2023) in the book 'History of Intellectual Culture'.
Chapter 5 'A women’s nation: Maria Anastasia Petrettini and her intellectual borderlands' of the PhD thesis draws upon an earlier version published as chapter 'Trans-Adriatic Enlightenments: Maria Petrettini’s Italian Translation of the Turkish Embassy Letters' (2024) in the book 'Gender and Cultural Mediation in the Long Eighteenth Century: Women across Borders'
Heterogeneous monetary policy transmission in the euro area : trade and firm dynamics
No full textDefence date: 21 May 2025Examining Board: Prof. Edouard Challe (Paris School of Economics; Former European University Institute, Supervisor); Prof. Ramon Marimon (European University Institute, Emeritus Professor); Prof. Isabelle Méjean, Sciences Institut d'études politiques de Paris); Prof. Gianmarco Ireo Paolo Ottaviano (Bocconi University)This thesis is composed of three essays in monetary economics, trade and firm dynamics. The first and second chapters contribute to the field of monetary economics and trade. The third chapter focuses on the heterogeneous effects of conventional and unconventional monetary policy on the investment of the firms across the euro area. In the first chapter, “Firm Heterogeneity, Price Discrimination, and Monetary Policy Transmission in the Euro Area: Evidence from French Exporters”, I provide empirical evidence of a novel mechanism of heterogeneous monetary policy transmission in the euro area triggered by monetary policy. By using French customs data, I explore a dynamic price discrimination mechanism of the French exporters towards the euro area destinations. I find that the destinations firms productivity distributions can explain partly this mechanism signalling a destination specific mechanism that leads to changes in the elasticity of demand in each destination. The mechanism I use to explain this is the selection mechanism as it is introduced in the Trade theory. Monetary policy shocks lead to a higher movement in the cut-off productivity at the more concentrated markets leading to changes in the domestic competition. The second chapter, “Firm Productivity Distributions, Trade, and the Heterogeneous Transmission of Monetary Policy”, replicates the empirical evidence from the first chapter through a two country monetary union model that integrates the Melitz-Ottaviano model in a New Keynesian framework with imperfect risk-sharing. The use of the quasi-linear preferences allow endogenous and heterogeneous markups. A monetary policy shock triggers the selection mechanism through a decrease in the demand of the households. Different skewness in the firms’ productivity distributions lead to an heterogeneous magnitude of the selection effect. As a result, the elasticity of demand will move in a different way across the destinations. The third chapter, “Monetary Policy, Investment, and Market Stabilization” ,1 co-authored with Luis Fonseca, John Hutchinson and Arthur Saint Guilhem, studies the heterogeneous effect of the common conventional and unconventional monetary policy to the investment rate of firms in Germany, Italy, Spain and France. Moreover, we use a novel measure of unconventional monetary policy that affects the spreads of Core and Periphery showing that there is a market-stabilization effect in the investment rate.-- Chapter 1 Firm Heterogeneity, Price Discrimination, and Monetary Policy Transmission in the Euro Area : Evidence from French Exporters
-- Chapter 2 Firm Productivity Distributions, Trade, and the Heterogeneous Transmission of Monetary Policy
-- Chapter 3 Monetary Policy, Investment, and Market Stabilization
-- Appendix to Chapter 1
-- Appendix to Chapter 2
-- Appendix to Chapter
Cultured proportionality : navigating the EU's fragmented facial recognition landscape
No full textDefence date: 19 May 2025Examining Board: Prof. Dr. Deirdre Curtin (European University Institute, Supervisor); Prof. Dr. Madalina Busuioc (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, External Supervisor); Prof. Dr. Giovanni Sartor (European University Institute); Prof. Dr. Els J. Kindt (Universiteit Leid)This thesis discusses the application of the proportionality principle to the use of Facial Recognition Technology (FRT) within the European Union (EU). It does so by conducting an empirical study of 48 opinions and decisions on the lawfulness of the use of FRT by selected regional and national Data Protection Authorities (DPAs), Article 29 Data Protection Working Party, the European Data Protection Board (EDPB) and the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS). This study is interwoven with material from expert interviews conducted with 25 (former) members of the selected regional and national DPAs, the EDPB and the EDPS. The thesis takes as a working assumption that the current EU legal framework applied to FRT is insufficient to provide adequate protection against human and fundamental rights violations by the use of this technology, particularly but not only the rights to privacy and data protection. Because of this, this thesis will discuss the application of the proportionality principle, a legal principle traditionally used to contest excessive and discretionary action, to the use of FRT. It will do so by building a theoretical framework around the principle of proportionality, discussing its enforcement by supervisory authorities and proposing a novel interpretation of the principle as an accountability tool (Chapter Two). It will also describe the normative framework for the application of the proportionality principle to the use of FRT (Chapter Three). It will empirically study (Chapters Four and Five) how the cultural idiosyncrasy of the different Member States affects their stance towards FRT in general and its proportionality in particular and whether the EDPB and the EDPS perform any kind of uniformizing role when it comes to the consistent application of the data protection regulation to FRT throughout the EU territory. Finally, Chapter Six will conclude whether it is possible to lawfully use FRT by applying the norms of the proportionality principle, what is the current practice by DPAs and the consistency issues that it entails at the EU level