21-22-23 September | Louvain-la-Neuve

Plenary Speaker

Romain WACZIARG (UCLA, Anderson School of Management)
 

Registration

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Program

Monday, September 21, 2026

Chairwoman : Paula Gobbi

14.30: Welcome café gourmand

15.00: Neil Cummins (LSE)
“The Evolution of Performative and Sincere Faith in England, 1258-1858” 
Discussant: Fabio Mariani

15.50: Coffee break

16.20: Sandra de Pleijt (Wageningen University) - Julius Koschnick (University of Southern Denmark)     
 “Alienated Intellectuals”.    
Discussant : Pau Insa Sánchez                 

17.10: Coffee break

17.40: Philipp Ager (University of Mannheim)
"Ministers and Minds: The Legacy of Colonial America’s Knowledge Class"
(joint with Paola Giuliano)
Discussant: Luca Pensieroso

18.30: End

19.30: Dinner

Tuesday, September 22, 2026

Chairwoman: Amma Panin

09.00: Sebastian Maes (University of Antwerp)
"Polycentrism and the Spatial Allocation of Human Capital”. 
Discussant: Chiara Zanardello          

09.50: Coffee break

10.20: Thomas Baudin (IESEG School of Management)
Inheritance and Migration: Evidence from 19th Century Italy
with Tommaso D’Amelio. Paula E. Gobbi and Simone Moriconi
Discussant: Karine Moukaddem

11.10: Coffee Break

Plenary session

11.40:  Romain Wacziarg (UCLA Anderson)
“Malthusian Migrations”                          

12.40: Lunch

14.00: David de la Croix (UCLouvain, LIDAM, IRES)
"Seeds of knowledge: scholars, universities, and academies in premodern Europe"

14.50: Coffee break

15.20: Sebastian Ottinger (CERGE-EI)
"Political Fragmentation, Forced Mobility, and Knowledge Accumulation in  Europe before 1800" 
(joint work with Sascha Becker, David de la Croix, and Nico Voigtländer). 
Discussant : Fabio Blasutto

16.10: Coffee break

16.40: Caterina Chiopris (Columbia University)
"The Diffusion of Ideas" 
Discussant: Cecilia Garcia-Peñalosa       

17.30: Break

18:20: Marc Goñi (University of Bergen)
"The AI before the Law: LLMs versus Expert Coding of Women's Rights in French Customary Law" 
Discussant: Alice Fabre      

19.30: Gala Dinner

Wednesday, September 23, 2026

Chairwoman: Sandra de Pleijt

09.00: Fabian Waldinger (University of Munich) 
"Dictators, Democracies, and Discoveries: Political Institutions and the  Creation of Knowledge" 
Discussant: Chun Chee Kok            

09.50 : Coffee break

10.20: Rossana Scebba (UCLouvain, LIDAM, IRES and KU Leuven, Research Unit of Early Modern History)
"Network-mediated screening under uncertainty: Evidence from early modern academic publishing"
Discussant: Pauline Morault

11.10: Coffee Break

11.40: Karol Borowiecki (University of Southern Denmark) – Matthew Curtis (University of Southern Denmark)
“Counterpoint: Do Peers Shape the Direction of Ideas in Music History?”
Discussant: Morgane Laouenan

12.30: Goodbye Lunch

14:00: The End

Other participants from ERC project: Virginia Calabrese, Mara Vitale