Arthur der Weduwen

My research focuses on history of communication, the early modern print world, the development of the state and the growth of a politically-engaged public. My PhD (2018, St Andrews), was a study of state communication in the seventeenth-century Dutch Republic, focusing specifically on government and municipal attempts to influence public opinion through proclamations and ordinances. I complemented my doctoral study with an interest in the emergence of commercial news and advertising: I published the first complete bibliography of all seventeenth-century Dutch and Flemish newspapers (Brill, 2017), and I am writing a study of seventeenth-century newspaper advertising in the Low Countries. Together with Andrew Pettegree I also wrote the first survey of book publishing in the Dutch Golden Age, published in 2019 by Yale University Press (in English) and Atlas Contact (in Dutch).

At St Andrews I am a postdoctoral researcher associated with the Universal Short Title Catalogue project, for which I work predominantly on the history of printing in the early modern Low Countries and Scandinavia. I also manage the annual volunteer summer programme which the USTC hosts every June and July. I have worked with the USTC project since I arrived at St Andrews as an M.Litt student in 2014. Prior to that I completed a BA in History and International Relations at the University of Exeter (2011-2014).

I am currently also working on turning my PhD thesis into a monograph, and on a project on the history of the library. The Library, A Fragile History will be published by Profile in 2021.