As of 1 October, Mathijs Speecke (°1993, Roeselare) joins SHOC as a postdoctoral researcher. Jointly affiliated with Vrije Universiteit Brussel and Ghent University, Mathijs works within the interdisciplinary iBOF project LOCO – The LOw COuntries: Crossroads of Europe from the Neolithic to the Late Middle Ages. LOCO investigates the movement of materials, people, and ideas into and out of the Low Countries over a span of seven millennia, combining archaeological, historical, anthropological, literary, and geochemical approaches.
Within LOCO, Mathijs examines the circulation of ideas in the late Middle Ages through the prism of village regulations. His research focuses on how these local norms were formulated, transmitted, adapted, and embedded in broader regional and supra-regional contexts. In addition to his research, he plays a coordinating role, facilitating collaboration between the project’s interdisciplinary partners.
Mathijs studied History at Ghent University, specialising in Medieval Studies. In December 2023 he defended his PhD thesis on the struggle for urban space in medieval Bruges (c. 1100–1600), analysing conflicts, negotiations, and power dynamics surrounding the appropriation and regulation of urban space. Over the past few years, he has also worked on various aspects of medieval rural history of the Low Countries – including lordship, ecology, and inequality – as well as on the knowledge profile of Jan van Eyck.
He has published on medieval urban and rural history and has been involved in collaborative, interdisciplinary projects integrating textual, archaeological, and environmental data. His current work at LOCO reflects his ongoing interest in connecting local, microhistorical perspectives to wider patterns of social, economic, and cultural change.