"The best way to send information is to wrap it up in a person."
J. Robert Oppenheimer

In collaboration between the Erasmus University Rotterdam’s departments of History (FHKW), History of Philosophy (FWB), and Legal History (FRG), the Erasmus Center for Early Modern Studies has created a monthly multidisciplinary research seminar for scholars interested in the way in which individual, community, and government in the Netherlands and Europe evolved, and how their interrelations were viewed in the Early Modern Age (1450-1750).

This research seminar was founded in 2003. For this year’s program, click here. For the program to date, click here.

For information about upcoming conferences, click here. Previously organized conferences were:

ERASMVS POLITICVS • Erasmus and Political Thought
International symposium • Rotterdam, November 13–15, 2008
Organizers: Hans Trapman • Wiep van Bunge • Jan van Herwaarden • Robert von Friedeburg
Participants: Jeanine DeLandtsheer (Louvain) • Elisabeth Kloosterhuis (Berlin) • Jill Kraye (London) • Nicolette Mout (Leiden) • Paul Rahe (Hillsdale) • Silvana Seidel Menchi (Pisa) • Han van Ruler (Rotterdam) • Erika Rummel (Toronto) • James Tracy (Minneapolis) • Hans Trapman (Rotterdam) • Wiep van Bunge (Rotterdam) • Jan van Herwaarden (Rotterdam) • Robert von Friedeburg (Rotterdam)

The Transformation of Christian Europe • Princes, Dynastic Agglomerations and Fatherlands in Shaping European Society
International workshop • Rotterdam, June 12-14, 2008
Organizers: Lucien Bely (Paris) • Robert von Friedeburg (Rotterdam) • John Morrill (Cambridge)
Participants: Antonio Alvarez-Ossorio Alvarino (Madrid) • Wim Blockmans (NIAS) • Tom Brady Jr. (Berkeley) • James Collins (Georgetown) • Vittor Ivo Comparato (Perugia) • Denis Crouzet (Paris) • Mikhail Dmitriev (Budapest) • Heinz Duchhardt (Mainz) • David Finnegan (Dublin) • Karin Friedrich (Aberdeen) • Robert Frost (Aberdeen) • Bernardo Garcia Garcia (Madrid) • Nicolette Mout (Leiden) • Thomas Nicklas (Erlangen) • Jane Ohlmeyer (Dublin, Trinity) • Heinz Schilling (Berlin) • Alexander Schmidt (Jena) • Arno Strohmeyer (Salzburg) • Karl Vocelka (Vienna)
The Transformation of Christian Europe program 5.0.pdf
Transformation of Christian Europe-2.pdf

British Social History Society Annual Conference 2008
Annual conference of the British Social History Society • Rotterdam, March 27–29, 2008

Public Offices, Private Demands • Capability in Governance in the Seventeenth-Century Dutch Republic
International symposium • Rotterdam, June 28-29, 2007
Organizers: Jan Hartman, Jaap Nieuwstraten, Michel Reinders (Rotterdam)
Keynote lecturer: Conal Condren (University of New South Wales, Sydney)

Early Modern Philosophy in Britain and the Netherlands 1500–1800 • Philosophers and Philosophies, Universities and Learned Societies, Books and Journals
Annual conference of the British Society for the History of Philosophy • Rotterdam, March 26–28, 2007

Dutch Decline in Eighteenth-Century Europe
International symposium • Rotterdam, September 28–29, 2006
Speakers: Doohwan Ahn (Cambridge) • Hans Blom (Rotterdam) • Ana Crespo Solana (Madrid) • Anna Grzeskowiak-Krwawicz (Warsaw) • Jan Hartman (Rotterdam) • Béla Kapossy (Lausanne & Fribourg) • Paul Klep (Nijmegen) • Charles-Edouard Levillain (Lille) • Iain McDaniel (Cambridge) • Michel Reinders (Rotterdam) • Sophus Reinert (Cambridge) • Lissa Roberts (Twente) • Michael-W. Serruys (Leiden) • Ida Stamhuis (Amsterdam) • Koen Stapelbroek (Rotterdam) • Mikko Tolonen (Helsinki) • Antonio Trampus (Venice) • Balazs Trencsenyi (Budapest) • Massimiliano Vaghi (Milan)

Private Wealth and Public Office • Perspectives from Urban Government and Territorial Monarchies during the Later Middle Ages to the Early Seventeenth Century
International symposium • Rotterdam, September 7–9, 2005
Speakers: Hans Blom (Rotterdam) • Lea Campos Boralevi (Florence) • Christine Carpenter (Cambridge) • Michael Chamberlain (Madison) • Angela DeBenedictis (Bologna) • Caroline Dodds (Cambridge) • Robert von Friedeburg (Rotterdam) • Martin Ingram (Oxford) • Eberhard Isenmann (Cologne) • Dale Kent (Riverside) • Diego Quaglioni (Trient) • Kristiaan Versluys (Gent)

Passions in Public Leadership: “Public” Legitimacy and the Performance of “Private” Passions in Historical Perspective, 200-2000
International symposium • Rotterdam, May 8-9, 2003
Speakers: Robert von Friedeburg (Rotterdam) • Paul Schulten (Rotterdam) • Janet Coleman (London) • Dale Kent (Florence/Riverside) • Jan van Herwaarden (Rotterdam) • Ralph Houlbrooke (Reading) • Siep Stuurman (Rotterdam) • Sarah Marquadt (Chicago) • Wiep van Bunge (Rotterdam) • Ian Hunter (Brisbane) • Anthony McElligot (Ireland) • Henri Beunders (Rotterdam)