Biography
Bram is a PhD candidate at the Erasmus University Rotterdam, employed at dr. Daniel Curtis' VIDI-project 'Positively Shocking'. He is mostly occupied with the redistributive effects of epidemic mortality in the seventeenth-century Low Countries. After obtaining an MA in Cultural History at Utrecht University, specializing in the history of hip-hop culture and finishing a thesis on the historical position of L.A. rapper Kendrick Lamar, Bram decided to somewhat radically change direction by working as a research assistant at Bas van Bavel's ERC-project on disasters in early modern northwestern Europe. Bram is specifically interested in the mechanisms and experience of inequality, and the effect of shocks thereon.
Erasmus School of History, Culture and Communication
External PhD candidate | Department of History
- hilkens@eshcc.eur.nl
More information
Work
- Bram Hilkens (2026) - Living off the land?: Land inequality in early modern central Holland 1543-1708
- Daniel Curtis, Bram van Besouw & Bram Hilkens (2025) - Household, family, and community responses to the direct costs of epidemics - History of the Family, 30 (3), 329-339 - doi: 10.1080/1081602X.2025.2543382
- Bram Hilkens, Bram van Besouw & Daniel Curtis (2020) - A Modern Rendition of a Pre-modern Scenario: Imperfect Institutions and Obscured Vulnerabilities - Journal for the History of Environment and Society, 5 (1), 211-221 - doi: 10.1484/J.JHES.5.122476 - [link]
