Bas van Bavel - Biography
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After having worked as a lecturer, post-doctoral researcher, and visiting fellow at the universities of Utrecht, Amsterdam, and Ghent, Bas van Bavel was appointed as senior researcher at Utrecht University in 2001. He directed various projects there, including a large project on pre-industrial growth and stagnation, and is currently the principal investigator and research leader of the ERC Advanced Grant project "Coordinating for Life". He teaches at the Departments of History and Economics and at University College Utrecht. In 2007, he was appointed professor of Economic and Social History of the Middle Ages at Utrecht University. As well as various editorships and memberships of international committees, he acted several years as the head of the section Economic and Social History. In 2007, Utrecht University asked him to become the coordinator of the newly established university focus area “Origins and Impacts of Institutions”. Bringing together the best researchers of the departments of history, sociology, economics, law and public administration, he has been working with his colleagues to develop this research area into a thriving, interdisciplinary research community, which aims to combine academic quality with societal relevance. The results were endorsed by Utrecht University in 2013, as shown by the nomination of this interdisciplinary program as one of its four strategic themes, under the name of "Institutions for Open Societies", and the associated funding for the coming four years. Bas van Bavel was asked to become the academic director of this interdisciplinary network, in which now some 300 scholars participate.

In 2014, Bas van Bavel was appointed Distinguished Faculty Professor, in the Faculty of Humanities at Utrecht University. His chair is titled “Transitions of Economy and Society”. This title reflects more closely his work for the interdisciplinary research theme “Institutions for Open Societies” and also the start of the new research project “Coordinating for life”, on the resilience of societies and its determinants.

Research profile

Through his research, Bas van Bavel aims to understand how societies develop in the long run and explain the striking differences we observe in their developmental path. Together with the young researchers working on his projects, he tries to find out why some societal arrangements are successful and others are not, and what drives the formation of these arrangements. Why are some societies capable of adapting their organisational structure to new challenges, and undergoing a successful transition of economy and society, while others lack this capability or experience a painful or unsustainable transition? This success can be measured economically, in GDP per capita or wealth, but also in ways which include the social aspects, such as equity and welfare, and the resilience to shocks and disasters, and the ecological ones, such as sustainable use of resources.

The area he primarily uses to test his ideas is pre-industrial Northwestern Europe, although he recently extended the geographical comparison to other parts of Europe and the Middle East, and has also become more interested in extending his research lines into the modern period. Methodologically, he tries to develop comparative analysis – both over time and across regions – as a research tool, and to link detailed, empirical research to big debates and theoretical questions. He has employed this comparative analysis in order to understand the interaction of social relations with demographic patterns, different trajectories of proto-industrialization and long-run changes in agricultural productivity. In recent years, he has become increasingly interested in the fundamental issue of the changing organization and functioning of land, lease and labour markets, and their divergent effects, also on equality, resilience, and social and ecological sustainability. By bringing these lines together, he aims to advance our understanding of the diverse, long run interaction between economy, society and institutions, and the regional differences in this interaction, which led to the divergencies found in the world today.

Funding ID

Over the past years, by way of several grants acquired within competitive application programmes, Bas van Bavel has built a dynamic research group, forming perhaps one of the leading groups in the world in pre-industrial economic and social history, and a large interdisciplinary network at Utrecht University. Both groups were built and consolidated by several grants. Earlier grants included:

• Innovational Scheme grant (NWO) personal grant of € 650,000 for the period 2001-2006, for his project “The organisation of markets in late medieval Holland”);
  
• VICI grant (largest personal grant in the Dutch innovational research incentives scheme, NWO) of € 850,000 from NWO and € 400,000 from UU for the period 2007-2012, for his project “Economic Growth and Stagnation in the Pre-Industrial Era: Iraq, Italy and the Low Countries, 600-1700”;
  
• Grant by Utrecht University for the university focus area “Origins and Impacts of Institutions”, of which he was the main applicant and academic coordinator. This grant of € 1,226,000 for the period 2008-2012 is for the promotion of interdisciplinary research within the faculties of Humanities, Social Sciences and Law.
  
• Grant by the University Board, Utrecht University for the knowledge centre Institutions of the Open Society, of which he was the main academic coordinator. These funds are allocated by the coordinator in order to develop new research projects with non-academic partners. Funds: € 400,000 for the period 2012-2013.
  
• Grant by FWO-Flanders for the research network “Comparative Rural History of the North Sea Area” (CORN), of which he was the co-applicant / member of the board (for the theme “Rural Resilience”). Funds: € 62,500 for the period 2011-2014.
  

His current research grants are:

• Spinoza Prize by Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) - the highest scientific distinction in the Netherlands. This prize of €2.5 mio. will be spent on scientific research.
• Grant by Utrecht University and the faculties of Humanities, Social Sciences and Law, Economics and Public Administration for the university strategic theme “Institutions for Open societies”, of which he is the academic director. This grant of c. € 10.5 mio. for the period 2013-2017 is for the promotion of interdisciplinary research within the three faculties involved.
  
• ERC Advanced Grant of € 2,250,000 for the period 2014-2019, a personal grant for the project “Coordinating for life. Success and failure of Western European societies in coping with rural hazards and disasters, 1300-1800”.
  

Supervision of young researchers

Within his research groups, Bas van Bavel worked with a large number of young scholars. His former PhDs all delivered their manuscripts on time – two of them have been published by Brill, one by Ashgate, and his former PhDs and post-doctoral students have found jobs in academia, at the universities of Utrecht, Leiden and York. Van Bavel is currently supervising 4 PhD's. He has supervised a large number of MA and external PhD students. His ability to stimulate young academics is also illustrated by the invitations to act as the keynote speaker at the founding meeting of the network for Early Career Medieval Economic Historians of Great Britain, held at Cambridge (2009), to coordinate the program for talented MA students to be trained as research assistants, sponsored by the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences (2011) and his role as member of the guidance committee of 4 Belgian PhDs. This ability also draws young researchers from abroad to Utrecht. Talented scholars from Cambridge and the Scuola Normale in Pisa have chosen to start working with him as an international PhD and postdoctoral researcher respectively.

Present editorial positions and memberships of boards

Besides frequently being invited by international journals and publishers to act as a reviewer of manuscripts or papers, and by scientific organizations to act as a referee for research applications (NWO, FWO, ERC, international organizations), at present Bas van Bavel hold the following editorial positions and memberships of boards:
2017- Member of the Social Sciences Council of the Netherlands (Sociaal-Wetenschappelijke Raad), since 2018 as member of the board
2017- Secretary of the Prof. F. de Vries Foundation
2016- Member of the council of the World Interdisciplinary Network for Institutional Research (WINIR)
2015- Chair of the route Towards Resilient Societies (NWO, Dutch National Science Agenda) 2013- Member of the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences (KNAW)
2013- Academic coordinator of the university strategic theme “Institutions for Open Societies” (Sociology, Law, Public Administration, Economics, History, Ethics, at Utrecht University)
2012- Member of the committee of research directors, faculty of Humanities, Utrecht University
2011- Co-director of the CORN axis “Rural Resilience to Disaster” (FWO-network)
2010- Member of the organization committee of the Center for Global Economic History at Utrecht University
2008- Member of the Scientific Committee of the Istituto Internazionale di Storia Economica “F. Datini”, Prato
2007- Editor of the series “Rural History in Europe” (COST, Publisher: Brepols, Turnhout)
2006- Editor of the series “Studies Stadsgeschiedenis” (Universiteit Antwerpen, Publisher: Aksant, Amsterdam)
2003- Member of the board of the international research network CORN (Comparative Rural History of the North Sea Area, FWO-network)

International collaboration

Bas van Bavel, apart from the collaboration on a more individual basis with international colleagues, is intensively involved in international research networks. This is, firstly, in the field of rural history, especially by way of the CORN network and its new axis “Rural Resilience”, and the network he built as a core group member and workgroup leader of COST action a35 (PROGRESSORE, 2007-2010). Next, there are the close contacts in the field of the pre-industrial economy and society, as formalized within the Istituto Internazionale di Storia Economica “F. Datini”, for instance. Also, there is the collaboration with colleagues working on institutional change, as crystallized, among others, in the activities and council membership within the World Interdisciplinary Network for Institutional Research (WINIR).

Publication Record

Bas van Bavel's publications include four single-authored monographs (two in Dutch, two in English) and ten edited volumes (of which eight in English), in addition to some 90 articles and book chapters. The international recognition of his research can be gauged from the publication of a substantial number of his papers by the top journals in the field, including the Economic History Review and the Journal of Interdisciplinary History. Past & Present – arguably the most reputable journal in the field of history - has published three of his articles (2001, 2007 and 2009). Oxford University Press published his monograph on the long-run economic and social development of the Low Countries in 2010, and his latest monograph, on the rise and fall of market economies, in 2016.