We are looking for a postdoctoral researcher:
1. who has successfully defended, or who will defend prior to October 2026, a Ph.D. in Law on a legal historical topic, or a Ph.D. in a related discipline (e.g. medieval or early modern history);
2. who is fluent in English, and at least has a reading knowledge of early modern Dutch and Latin; knowledge of French is an added value;
3. who can work autonomously, but who also is a teamplayer, and open to an international research environment.
Experience with archival research and paleography is an added value.
In your application file, please include a letter of motivation, a detailed cv (with references to earlier publications, if any), and a scan of your Ph.D. degree. If you have not yet defended your Ph.D. thesis, please add a letter of recommendation by your Ph.D. supervisor to your application file, in which it is confirmed that (in all likelihood) the Ph.D. will indeed be defended prior to October 2026.
In the framework of the FWO-funded project on "Stepchildren in the early modern Duchy of Brabant: the interplay between particular law and ius commune (1425-1629)" (G027826N), the postdoctoral researcher will:
4. conduct archival and doctrinal legal-historical research on the legal position of stepchildren in the early modern Duchy of Brabant, in the fields of family law, family property law, and inheritance law;
5. write four scientific articles on this research for publication in international peer-reviewed journals, as sole or main author;
6. co-organize, together with the project's promoter (prof. dr. Wouter Druwé), an international conference on the legal position of stepchildren in early modern Europe;
7. co-edit, together with the promoter, the ensuing conference volume;
8. co-author, together with the promoter, a concluding article on the main findings of the research project (combining insights from the first four articles and from the research by the promoter);
9. present the research at several international conferences.
The FWO-project also offers financing for two one-month research stays at other European research institutions.The postdoctoral researcher is expected to actively participate in and contribute to the activities of the Research Unit. The researcher will be able to profit as well from the activities organized within the MSCA Doctoral Network 'TESTAMENT'.The KU Leuven Research Unit Roman Law and Legal History, which is a department of the Faculty of Law and Criminology, is an interdisciplinary and internationally oriented research group, which currently consists of four professors and about ten junior researchers. Next to a research axis on the history of international law and colonial legal history, the department has a strong focus on and track record in the study of ius commune, especially in the early modern period (15th-18th centuries). From 1 March 2026 onwards, the Research Unit (prof. dr. Wouter Druwé) will also be coordinating an interdisciplinary European MSCA Doctoral Network on the history of testamentary law and practices in the early modern period, bringing together social and legal historians from five different universities and several archives and museums in four European countries. The current vacancy is part of a project funded by the Research Foundation - Flanders (FWO) on "Stepchildren in the early modern Duchy of Brabant: the interplay between particular law and ius commune (1425-1629)" (G027826N). The project investigates how contractual and testamentary freedom, as developed in learned law and moral theology, could, already in the early modern period, be employed to moderate the legal ramifications of the distinction between consanguineous offspring and stepchildren in particular law. In the early modern Low Countries, there were many stepfamilies (blended families), partly because of the high mortality rate. The factual omnipresence of stepchildren contrasts with the limited attention that has been given to them in both early modern particular law and legal-historical scholarship today. The project focuses on the early modern Duchy of Brabant, where the number of jurists and moral theologians that had studied Roman law increased after the foundation of the Leuven university in 1425. Learned jurists took on several functions in legal practice, as judges, aldermen, and ducal councellors. Research into the archives of the university town of Leuven, the mercantile hub of Antwerp, and the administrative city of 's-Hertogenbosch on the basis of prenuptial agreements, last wills, and donations will uncover the extent to which the learned legal tradition was employed to deviate from customary law in addressing legal challenges encountered by stepfamilies. The postdoctoral researcher, funded by this project, will therefore combine archival research with an analysis of legal doctrine and moral theological literature.
We offer a three-year full-time position as a postdoctoral research associate in salary scale 44. The earliest starting date for the position will be 1 May 2026, but it is possible to start later (at the latest October 2026). The Ph.D. degree must have been obtained prior to the start of the position.
The postdoctoral research associate will form part of the small, but very active and thriving Research Unit Roman Law and Legal History, and will be integrated into a Europe-wide network of scholars on the history of family law in the early modern period.