Uploaded May 2021 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
The early modern world was one of movement, contact, and exchange. Yet, this does not mean that it was borderless. On the contrary, connection existed only when people moved along and across the separations between polities, religions, and mentalities. So in order to understand early modern connections, one also needs to analyze the boundaries that accompanied them. Both the early modern Low Countries and Austria can function as a ‘laboratory’ for studying border formation and border management through the lens of transregional history. Crossing borders in early modern times was not merely an act of negating a territorial division, but rather a moment of intimate interaction with the separation itself. During this presentation, Violet Soen and Sophie Verreyken, in conversation with Jeroen Dewulf and Joseph Patrouch, will discuss some of the new directions in the study of border regimes in the Habsburg Worlds, while Sophie Verreyken will showcase how these new insights can provide fresh perspective to a transregional family like the Arenberg family, chiefly operating from the Habsburg Netherlands, but developing matrimonial strategies both in Austria and Spain.
Speakers:
Violet Soen is Associate Professor of History at KU Leuven and a former holder of the P.P. Rubens-Chair at UC Berkeley. She steers www.transregionalhistory.eu, a research platform exploring the multiple facets of cross-border exchange and regimes in the Ancient Regime. This novel approach was distinguished with the laureate prize in humanities of the Royal Academy of Flanders, awarded to the most innovative researcher under 40. She is editor of the series Habsburg Worlds at Brepols Publishers.
Dr. Sophie Verreyken is teaching assistant at the early modern history department of KU Leuven, and member of www.transregionalhistory.eu. She has worked extensively on the history of the early modern Habsburg polycentric Monarchy and its interactions with the old and new worlds. She is currently finishing a doctoral dissertation on the political role of transregional marriages among Hispano-Flemish elites in the Spanish Habsburg Netherlands (1650–1700).
Moderators: IES Director Jeroen Dewulf and Joseph Patrouch, Director of the Wirth Institute for Austrian and Central European Studies at the University of Alberta
Co-organized with the Wirth Institute for Austrian and Central European Studies at the University of Alberta, and KU Leuven, Department of History
Co-sponsors: IES Benelux Program; Dutch Studies; Institute of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies, UC Berkeley
The early modern world was one of movement, contact, and exchange. Yet, this does not mean that it was borderless. On the contrary, connection existed only when people moved along and across the separations between polities, religions, and mentalities. So in order to understand early modern connections, one also needs to analyze the boundaries that accompanied them. Both the early modern Low Countries and Austria can function as a ‘laboratory’ for studying border formation and border management through the lens of transregional history. Crossing borders in early modern times was not merely an act of negating a territorial division, but rather a moment of intimate interaction with the separation itself. During this presentation, Violet Soen and Sophie Verreyken, in conversation with Jeroen Dewulf and Joseph Patrouch, will discuss some of the new directions in the study of border regimes in the Habsburg Worlds, while Sophie Verreyken will showcase how these new insights can provide fresh perspective to a transregional family like the Arenberg family, chiefly operating from the Habsburg Netherlands, but developing matrimonial strategies both in Austria and Spain.
Speakers:
Violet Soen is Associate Professor of History at KU Leuven and a former holder of the P.P. Rubens-Chair at UC Berkeley. She steers www.transregionalhistory.eu, a research platform exploring the multiple facets of cross-border exchange and regimes in the Ancient Regime. This novel approach was distinguished with the laureate prize in humanities of the Royal Academy of Flanders, awarded to the most innovative researcher under 40. She is editor of the series Habsburg Worlds at Brepols Publishers.
Dr. Sophie Verreyken is teaching assistant at the early modern history department of KU Leuven, and member of www.transregionalhistory.eu. She has worked extensively on the history of the early modern Habsburg polycentric Monarchy and its interactions with the old and new worlds. She is currently finishing a doctoral dissertation on the political role of transregional marriages among Hispano-Flemish elites in the Spanish Habsburg Netherlands (1650–1700).
Moderators: IES Director Jeroen Dewulf and Joseph Patrouch, Director of the Wirth Institute for Austrian and Central European Studies at the University of Alberta
Co-organized with the Wirth Institute for Austrian and Central European Studies at the University of Alberta, and KU Leuven, Department of History
Co-sponsors: IES Benelux Program; Dutch Studies; Institute of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies, UC Berkeley
