Historical Network Series Fall 2021

KBR invites you to attend a scholarly series on digital cultural heritage, the KBR-ULB-UGent Digital Heritage Seminar.

In this series from October to December 2021 we will virtually host three academic scholars in presenting their work on cultural heritage and historical networks. Network research serves to enhance our understanding of the human past, by retracing the social, political, or cultural networks from historical materials. We show in this series how these findings and approaches to networks, through a variety of topics, periods and methods, give us unique insights in the past and the materials we use in our work.

These talks will be held, via Microsoft Teams, in English, with questions in French, Dutch or English. The target audience is scholars, but the general public is warmly welcome.

This series is co-organised by KBR’s Digital Research Lab, in cooperation with Université libre de Bruxelles, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, and Ghent University.

Programme

7 December 2021

• Jan Vandersmissen, History Department, Ghent University
• Christophe Verbruggen, History Department, Ghent Centre for Digital Humanities, Ghent University

Historical Network Research: the case of Governing Belgian Expansionism in Egypt through the Lens of Interlocking Directorates

‘Interlocking directorates’ is a term that emerged in the study of monopole formation in the world of business in the United States and Europe from the late nineteenth century onwards: directorates are here considered as networks or parts of networks that embody financial and organizational ties between large corporations which also became interlocked with financial institutions. By looking closer to the practice of interlocking directorates in the Belgo-Egyptian economic context of the late nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth century we are able to disentangle connections, relations and patterns that express evolving spheres of influence and action. The results from the network analysis indicate and explain the diverging or converging directions in which Belgian economic activities in Egypt have expanded, and detail the involvement of local elites and corporate cosmopolitanism. This presentation is based on a systematic and in-depth analysis of information about the directorates of 28 companies, taken from the Belgian Recueil financier for the period 1894-1947.

Duration: 1,5 hours

Registration is free but mandatory. The morning of the event you will be sent the link to the virtual series and the etiquette to follow.

Should have any further questions please email whyvr.ovexubym@xoe.or.