Thesis Defense - Rossana Scebba

21/09/2026 - 10:00 - Leuven

Rossana Scebba

will publicly defend her dissertation

Bridging Data Science and Intellectual History: Knowledge Networks in and around the Old University of Louvain (1425–1797)

to earn a Ph.D. in Economics and Management

Monday, September 21,  at 10:00 a.m. in the Justus Lipsiuszaal (KU Leuven)

Thesis completed under the joint supervision and dual-degree agreement between UCLouvain and KU Leuven. 

Abstract

This doctoral dissertation studies early modern scholarly communities through the lens of networks: academic networks on the one hand, and publishing networks on the other. It sits at the intersection of computational history and quantitative economic history, and attempts to operate a synthesis between the two disciplinary approaches. The Old University of Louvain (1425-1797) serves as both the anchoring case study and the point of departure for a wider regional and European inquiry. Using a novel infrastructure combining historical data on academic scholars and library catalogs spanning almost three centuries, the dissertation develops five chapters investigating the overarching question of how was knowledge production in premodern Europe organized through the interaction of shared affiliation and material networks. Chapters 1 and 2 reconstruct the Louvain intellectual network and situate the approach relative to existing traditions in the humanities and in the social sciences. Chapter 3 widens the scope at the European level and uses the affiliation network binding scholars across the continent as the vector for spread of new ideas. Chapter 4 zooms back again on Louvain and uses a comparative approach to study the partnerships and publishing network of five notable printers operating in the city across different time periods. Chapter 5 settles on the region of the historic Low Countries, and tackles a classical economic question, examining whether printers and publishers leaned on accumulated social ties to screen unfamiliar authors, and to what extent this reliance intensified during the institutional disruption that marked the region’s history from the first stirrings of the Reformation onward.

Members of the Jury

Prof. David de la Croix (UCLouvain), promoter and secretary of the jury
Prof. Margherita Fantoli (KULeuven), promoter
Prof. Violet Soen (KULeuven), co-promoter
Prof. Maïka Dekeyzer (KULeuven), chairwoman of thejury
Prof. Fabio Mariani (UCLouvain), 
Prof. Mark Depauw (KULeuven), 
Prof Dirk Van Miert (KNAW et Utrecht)
Prof. Romain Wacziarg (UCLA)