Call for Proposals: EMLC Special Issue (Winter 2026)

28-03-2025

Call for Proposals

EMLC special issue 2026: Celebrating 10 Years of Early Modern Low Countries Scholarship

In 2016, a group of scholars from Belgium and The Netherlands hatched an ambitious  plan: to launch a new journal dedicated to the study of the early modern Low Countries. A decade on, Early Modern Low Countries (EMLC) has published 90 essays on almost any topic imaginable – from kites and sexuality to alba amicorum and death by drowning. It is time, therefore, to celebrate and look ahead: how has the field of early modern Low Countries studies developed over the past ten years, and where is it heading?

We invite proposals for relatively brief essays (ca. 3,000–4,000 words, including footnotes) from scholars at all career stages. Authors may explore a brief case study – a tantalising source, a forgotten historical figure or event, a promising database – to discuss recent trends or debates in Low Countries studies. In addition, these case studies should serve as a starting point for reflections on the past, present, and future of early modern Netherlandish studies. What sort of themes and approaches have been especially fruitful, both in the pages of EMLC and the wider field? And what are the most pressing needs and desires to advance scholarship on the Low Countries?

To answer these questions, we encourage authors to speak to one or more of the following mission statements of EMLC:

  • To facilitate interdisciplinary and/or multidisciplinary perspectives on the early modern Low Countries;
  • To pursue a diachronic analysis across the early modern era, broadly defined, rather than focus on a single century;
  • To study the Northern and Southern Low Countries as an interconnected region, rather than as two separate entities;
  • To approach the Low Countries from an international and global perspective.

Please submit your proposal (max. 1 page) and short CV (also 1 page) by 1 June 2025. Proposals should have a clear title and address at least one of the four EMLC mission statements outlined above. We encourage both established scholars and early career researchers to submit. You may send your proposal to Dr. David van der Linden, managing editor of EMLC, via earlymodernlowcountries@gmail.com.

All proposals will be considered by the editorial board. We expect to inform authors by early July. If your proposal is accepted, the full article will be due in January 2026. EMLC is a diamond open-access journal, at no charge to the author. Details of the journal’s scope and a list of the editorial board are available on our website: https://emlc-journal.org/.