For the fifth meeting of 'Somewhere beyond the sea', the Belgo-British Digital Research Network for Medieval Urban History, we have the pleasure of hosting Leen Bervoets, PhD-student at the Henri Pirenne Institute and teaching assistant at the History Department of Ghent University. She will speak on  ''Ch'est de le bourgoisie': Acquiring burghership in the thirteenth-century towns of Flanders and Northern France'.

In her research, Leen focuses on thirteenth-century burghership within the specific social tensions which characterized the century in Flemish urban societies. She investigates how the phenomenon of burghership was shaped by / interacted with the important economic, social, political and cultural transitions which were taking place.

Somewhere beyond the sea is an initiative of the Henri Pirenne Institute for Medieval Studies at Ghent University and the School of History at Queen Mary University London (Prof. Miri Rubin).