Brussels Information, Documentation and Research Center
In May 2005, BRIO was founded as a consortium. Participants are the Flemish academic associations that are located in Brussels. The 'Centrum voor de Interdisciplinaire Studie van Brussel' at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel and the 'Studiecentrum voor Ondernemerschap' at the KUBrussel/EHSAL were the founders of this initiative. It is supported by the Flemish minister of Culture, Youth, Sports and Brussels and the Vlaamse Gemeenschapscommissie. Consequently, BRIO has a history of thirty years in academic research about Brussels, its (inter)national context and Flemish cultural life in the capital. Its aim is to become the keystone of academic research on Brussels and the 'Vlaamse Rand'. Apart from conducting academic research, BRIO developed a virtual information center, containing all kinds of data and publications about Brussels.
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Social & Cultural Food Studies
In the past ten years, food research has gained tremendous interest in the humanities and social sciences. Sociologists, anthropologists, economists, historians, art historians, social geographers, linguists, philosophers, archaeologists, ethnologists, and social and cultural theorists devoted attention to the seemingly banal acts of shopping, cooking, eating and drinking. This was characterized by a myriad of approaches and themes, which comprised social and economic policy, health concerns, identity formation, sociability, inequality, signification, and globalization.
These researchers wanted to institutionalize the expertise by setting up a new research group at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. Therefore, in April 2003, FOST (Social & Cultural Food Studies) was founded.
FOST works in collaboration with the Vlaams Centrum voor Volkscultuur, the Institut Européen de l'Histoire de l'Alimentation and the Institut National de Recherche Agronomique.
FOST aims at consolidating the expertise by inviting (foreign) specialists to workshops and colloquia, by operating within networks, by publishing and contemplating about food studies, and by performing new (multidisciplinary) food research. This multidisciplinary, internationally rooted base guarantees a diversity of approaches, methodologies and theories around a common research field.
As of the 1970's, the Department of History of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel plays an important role in this research field, in Belgium and on an international level.
In recent years, colleagues from other departments have shown vivid interest in food studies, and today this expertise is present in various departments of the university. This attention and qualification led to the submitting of several research proposals dealing with food studies.
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Interdisciplinary Research Group Freemasonry
The scientific research, and especially historiography concerning freemasonry in Europe has been expanding rapidly in the last decade. A tightly-knit research community has been formed on the European level, and to some extent even on a global scale. The many research centres, situated notably in Spain, The Netherlands, Great Britain and France, structure this field. In Belgium, the Interdisciplinary Research Group Freemasonry (FREE), which was founded at the VUB in 2005, has contributed actively to this network by organizing and participating in seminars, workshops and international conferences such as the International Conferences on the History of Freemasonry and by presenting its research through publications such as the Journal of Research into Freemasonry and Fraternalism. The research group studies the way in which masonic lodges and freemasons have contributed to the shaping of a new civil society in a secularised world. Freemasonry is thus used as a lens through which broader social, political and cultural phenomena can be analysed. Today, members of FREE are investigating subjects as diverse as the construction of national identities, the social and political role of musicians and music, anti-masonry, funerary culture and fraternalism.
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Historical Research into Urban Transformation Processes
Urban history is a broad and dynamic research area in which scholars from very diverse disciplines can encounter and inspire one another. At the same time, it is an area of research that can be explored and implemented in many different ways. In HOST the focus lies with European cities, from Classical Antiquity to the present, with special attention for the role of cities as catalysts for processes of economic innovation, social exclusion/integration, and political-institutional change, and as loci of cultural creativity and the broadening of mental horizons.
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The Institute for Early Modern History is a research alliance linking historians of the Early Modern Period from Ghent University with those from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. The study of the transformational processes marking the beginning and end of the period, and developments in specific social areas across the era, forms the common thread in members' investigations. The institute regularly organizes scientific gatherings and acts as a forum for the PhD students of Early Modern history at Ghent University and the Vrije Universiteit Brussel.
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Research Group Gender and Diversity
The 'Onderzoekscentrum voor Gender en Diversiteit' is a cooperation between researchers from different departments, that are all, through research and/or education, involved in gender studies.
Rhea committee members are responsible for the day-to-day worries and for the organisation of the course 'Inleiding tot de Vrouwenstudies' and for the seminars 'Tweespraak'.
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Roman Society Research Center
The RSRC is an international joint research center of Ghent University, the Free University of Brussels and the University of Kent. Its aim is to promote studies in the history of the Roman World in all its various aspects. It embraces contributions in the field of economic, social, political, cultural and mentality history from the dawn of Roman history (8th c. BCE) to the end of Late Antiquity (6 c. CE), including the (hellenised) East and the auxiliary disciplines (epigraphy, papyrology and numismatics) studying historical sources. The center actively seeks to promote and support research initiatives and projects in all these fields. Twice a year, the RSRC organises workshops in Brussels and Ghent to present ongoing research, featuring both prominent senior researchers and promising juniors. It also has an international six year research program on 'Land & Natural Resources (2009-2011), 'Labour' (2011-2013) and 'Capital' (2013-2015), with three colloquia (2011, 2013, 2015) that will lead to three scholarly collective books on these topics.
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