Prof Dr Bram van Hofstraeten (B.)
Since 2018, Prof. dr. Bram Van Hofstraeten is working as an endowed professor (Legal History of the Limburgish Territories, LGOG) at the Faculty of Law. As a legal historian, the focus of his research activities lies on the history of commercial law in early modern Europe in the first place. As a lecturer, Van Hofstraeten takes part in the courses 'Comparative Legal History of the Meuse-Rhine EUregion' and 'Metajuridica' at Maastricht University, while at the same time coordinating the course 'Legal History' at Hasselt University in Belgium. Since 2019, Van Hofstraeten also acts as chief editor of the Belgian-Dutch scientific journal 'Pro Memorie'.
Expertises
- History of Medieval and Early Modern Commercial Law
- History of Company Law
- Legal History
- Paleography
- Early Modern Economic History
- Late Medieval Church History
Career history
In 2008, Dr. Bram Van Hofstraeten successfully defended his PhD cum laude on the recording of customary law in the cities of Antwerp and Roermond during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (Maastricht University). Subsequently, Van Hofstraeten moved to the Catholic University of Leuven (Belgium) where he worked for four years as a postdoctoral researcher on the history of early modern private partnerships in Antwerp. In 2013, he returned to Maastricht as a Marie Curie Fellow while extending his research on early modern private partnerships to the cities of Maastricht and Liège. In 2016, het was appointed associate professor at the Maastricht Faculty of Law after acquiring a VIDI research grant (NWO) which allows him to set up his own, interdisciplinary research team on early modern private partnerships in Amsterdam, Liège and Antwerp.