Anne-Frederique Provou

Link to our website: https://capt.hypotheses.org/

My PhD dissertation in medieval history focuses on the capacity of the towns of French-speaking Flanders to innovate administratively and politically within a cultural context that fostered suspicion toward novelty. Reform was more closely tied to the restoration of the ancient order of things, as willed by God, rather than to invention. I examine this tension and the ways in which the aldermen and officials of Flemish and Artois towns managed, in a sense, to “make old with new” in the name of an imperative present, drawing on sources from urban practice (deliberation registers, account books, urban and princely ordinances, etc.). My dissertation is part of the Franco-Swiss Sinergia research project mentioned above, “Capturing the Present."