PhD position in project LangPro: ‘Societies and Guilds in the Language Industry’
The LangPro project examines the notion of the language sector in early modern North-West Europe: that part of early modern societies and economies which relied primarily on language skills. The early modern period saw a swift increase in occupational opportunities for men and women who possessed language skills such as reading, writing, and text editing in one or more languages. However, since language professionals have never been studied as a separate category in the early modern workforce, the possibilities that existed for linguistically skilled individuals remain a big unknown. LangPro’s central research question is: What professional, financial, and social opportunities did the early modern language sector offer to men and women in the Low Countries, France, the German lands, and England, between 1550 and 1650? Laying the groundwork for a new research domain on the history of the language sector, the project team will develop a prosopographical database that makes it possible to gain insight into the characteristics of professionals in the past whose core business was language and the nature of the sector that employed them.
PhD position: Early Modern Language Associations: Societies and Guilds in the Language Industry
This PhD project will examine how language professionals supported each other by uniting in guilds, societies, and associations in early modern North-West Europe. To this end, the PhD candidate will study early modern archives of guilds and associations related to the language industry in the Low Countries, France, Germany, and England, between 1550 and 1650. Studying the organisations that were related to the language sector is imperative for our understanding of the functioning of this professional domain: to what extent and how did guilds in the language sector verify and guarantee the levels of language proficiency of their members? In what types of conflict did guilds in the language sector mediate? What schooling did they offer?
The PhD candidate will be working within the ERC Starting Grant research project LangPro, funded for 2026-2031 by the European Research Council, and directed by dr. Alisa van de Haar (university lecturer in historical French literature at Leiden University). Prof. Nadine Akkerman (professor in early modern literature and culture at Leiden University) will be the co-supervisor of the PhD candidate.
Application deadline: 15 February 2026