SHORT ACADEMIC BIOGRAPHY After having worked as a lecturer, post-doctoral researcher, and visiting fellow at the universities of Utrecht, Amsterdam, and Ghent, I was appointed as senior researcher at Utrecht University in I directed various projects there and currently am the principal investigator and research leader of a project on pre-industrial growth and stagnation, and also teach at the Departments of History and Economics and at University College Utrecht.
By bringing these lines together, I aim to advance much further in this search for better understanding 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. In recent years, I have 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 1Ģ ecological sustainability. I have 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. Methodologically, I tried to develop comparative analysis both over time and across regions as a sharp research tool, and to link detailed, empirical research to big debates and theoretical questions. The area I primarily use to test my ideas is pre-industrial Northwestern Europe, although I recently extended the geographical comparison to other parts of Europe and the Middle East, and have also become more interested in extending my research lines into the modern period.
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. Together with the young researchers working on my projects, I aim to find out why some societal arrangements are successful and others are not, and what drives the formation of these arrangements. Bas (B.J.P.) van Bavel Section Economic and Social History Department of History and Art History Faculty of Humanities Utrecht University (NL) Phone: Address: Drift BS Utrecht, the Netherlands RESEARCH PROFILE Through my research, I want to understand how societies develop in the long run and explain the striking differences we observe in their developmental path.
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