Geenen, Sara, Cordero-Fernández, María Jose, Cotino, Amy, Jucá, Múcio, Flores, Selmira, Soto, Fernanda, Nkuba, Bossissi, Das, Sourya & Verrelst, Janus (2025), Caring for our common home : sustainability, justice and solidarity in university partnerships. Gent, Owl Press, 421 p.
This book is the result of forty years of collaboration between the University Foundation for Development Cooperation (USOS) at the University of Antwerp and its partner institutions in the South. The book attempts to formulate a number of responses to the devastating consequences of climate change, loss of biodiversity, extractivism, social exclusion, and growing inequality by emphasizing the practices and struggles of local and indigenous communities. The book is a collection of submissions from the global partner network and draws on a variety of disciplines such as Design Sciences, Medical Sciences, Law, Biology, Economics, and Development Studies.
Marchal, Sarah & Marx, Ive (2024), Zero Poverty Society. Ensuring a Decent Income for All. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 330p.
This book examines how rich societies can guarantee a decent minimum income for all, enabling dignity and social participation. Written by Ive Marx and Sarah Marchal, it builds on original empirical analysis to assess minimum income protection and debates around targeting, means-testing, non-take-up, behavioural economics, and basic income. The book connects to the AIPRIL research agenda by exploring how policy design can prevent poverty through context-sensitive and effective welfare measures.
Saelens, Wout, Blondé, Bruno & Ryckbosch, Wouter (2023), Energy in the early modern home: material cultures of domestic energy consumption in Europe, 1450–1850. London: Routledge, 260p.
Uncovering, for the first time, the role played by home users in fostering energy changes, this book explores the effects of energy transitions between the medieval and industrial era on the everyday life of Europeans and considers how cultural, social and material changes in the home facilitated the transition towards a more energy-demanding world. This book delves deeper into the interactions between early modern consumers and the ecological constraints of the world surrounding them. Experts on specific aspects of domestic energy use departing from different case studies in early modern Europe confront these central issues. This book therefore offers a wide range of approaches within a long-term and comparative perspective. Different ‘material cultures of energy’ across time and space and across different climates in Europe are explored. Ultimately, this book aims to consider how the early modern home not just adapted to energy changes, but perhaps even prepared the way for our modern addiction to fossil energy. Energy in the Early Modern Home is the perfect resource for students and scholars of early modern Europe, premodern environmental history, the history of consumption and material culture, and the history of science and technology.
Van Damme, Ilja, Greefs, Hilde, Jongepier, Iason & Soens, Tim (2022), Historical atlas of Antwerp. Between aspiration and achievement. Bussum: Thoth, 80 p.
Antwerp is famous for becoming the northern hub of European trade around the turn of the sixteenth century. This international status went hand in hand with ambitious urban explansion plans, only some of which could be realized, and by around 1700 the city had contracted again inside its walls. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the port revived and industrialization brought renewed growth. New docks were built, the city centre was modernized, and the suburbs were integrated into the urban fabric. As before, however, the more ambitious plans, such as the construction of a whole new city on the left bank of the river, never got off the drawing board.Using cartographic and visual historical material, this Historical Atlas of Antwerp provides a unique insight into ‘represented space’ as imagined by politicians, artist, planners and residents. With the help of innovative digital GIS analysis unsuspected connections and patterns of urban development are brought to light.From the emergence of the ancient heart of the city, the Burcht (‘Fortress’), the reader is guided through its sixteenth-century heyday to the ever more rapid transformations of the post-war years. The construction of churches, quays and docks, trading houses, squares and urban mansions is presented in pithy narratives that say as much about how the city was intended to be constructed as about how it eventually turned out. Both are crucial to steering Antwerp’s further expansion in the twenty-first century.
Blondé, Bruno, Geens, Sam, Greefs, Hilde, Ryckbosch, Wouter, Soens, Tim & Stabel, Peter (2020), Inequality and the City in the Low Countries (1200 - 2020). Turnhout: Brepols, 409p.
This book engages with the complex interplay between urbanisation and inequality. In doing so it concentrates on the Low Countries, one of the oldest and most urbanised societies of Europe. It is co-edited by Bruno Blondé and Tim Soens, both supervisors of AIPRIL, together with Sam Geens (AIPRIL member), Hilde Greefs, Peter Stabel and Wouter Ryckbosch. The book connects to the AIPRIL research agenda by examining long-term changes in the drivers of inequality.
Watch prof. dr. Blondé explain more about the book (Dutch only): Linked Here
Landsteiner, Erich & Soens, Tim (2020), Farming the city: the resilience and decline of urban agriculture in European history. Studienverlag, 228 p.(Jahrbuch für Geschichte des ländlichen Raumes ; 16)
"Farming the City: The Resilience and Decline of Urban Agriculture in European History", edited by Erich Landsteiner and Tim Soens, explores the long-term, shifting role of agriculture within European cities from the medieval period to the present. The work highlights that urban farming was historically essential for food security, specialized production, and city resilience, challenging the view that cities were strictly non-agrarian settlements.
Puttevils, Jeroen & Blondé, Bruno (2020), Antwerp in the Renaissance. Turnhout: Brepols. 315p.
This book engages with Antwerp in the Renaissance. Bringing together several specialists of sixteenth-century Antwerp, it offers new research results and fresh perspectives on the economic, cultural and social history of the metropolis in the sixteenth century. Recurrent themes are the creative ways in which the Italian renaissance was translated in the Antwerp context. Imperfect imitation often resulted from the specific social context in which the renaissance was translated: Antwerp was a metropolis marked by a strong commercial ideology, a high level affluence and social inequality, but also by the presence of large and strong middling layers, which contributed to the city's 'bourgeois character. The growth of the Antwerp market was remarkable: in no time the city gained metropolitan status. This book does a good job in showing how quite a few of the Antwerp 'achievements' did result from the absence of 'existing structures' and 'examples'. Moreover, the city and its culture were given shape by the many frictions, and uncertainties that came along with rapid urban growth and religious turmoil.
Soens, Tim, De Keyzer, Maïka & De Bont, Raf (2020), Covid-19 & environmental history. Turnhout: Brepols, 233p.
van Bavel, Bas, Curtis, Dan, Dijkman, Jessica, Hanaford, Matthew, De Keyzer, Maïka, Van Onacker, Eline & Soens, Tim (2020), Disasters and history: the vulnerability and resilience of past societies. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 232p.
Disasters and History offers the first comprehensive historical overview of hazards and disasters. Drawing on a range of case studies, including the Black Death, the Lisbon earthquake of 1755 and the Fukushima disaster, the authors examine how societies dealt with shocks and hazards and their potentially disastrous outcomes. They reveal the ways in which the consequences and outcomes of these disasters varied widely not only between societies but also within the same societies according to social groups, ethnicity and gender. They also demonstrate how studying past disasters, including earthquakes, droughts, floods and epidemics, can provide a lens through which to understand the social, economic and political functioning of past societies and reveal features of a society which may otherwise remain hidden from view. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
De Herdt, Tom & Titeca, Kristof (2019), Negotiating public services in the Congo : state, society and governance. London: Zed Books, 272 p.
The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has been widely derided as a failed state, unable to meet the basic needs of its citizens. But while state infrastructure continues to decay, many essential services continue to be provided at the local level, often through grassroots initiatives. So while, for example, state funding for education is almost non-existent, average school enrolment remains well above average for Sub-Saharan Africa. This book addresses this paradox, bringing together key scholars working on public services in the DRC to elucidate the evolving nature of governance in developing countries. Its contributions encompass a wide range of public services, including education, justice, transport, and health. Taking stock of what functions and why, it contributes to the debate on public services in the context of 'real' or 'hybrid' governance beyond the state: does the state still have a function, or is it no longer useful and relevant? Crucially, how does international aid help or complicate this picture? Rich in empirical detail, the contributors provide a valuable work for students and scholars interested in the role played by non-state actors in organizing statehood – a role too often neglected in debates on post-conflict reconstruction.