Mathijs Boom

Ahead of new print alert! You can now read @mathijsboom.bsky.social and Jip van Besouw's "Rising Seas, Sinking Lands: Reckoning with Local and Global Sea Level in the Early Modern Netherlands" from the January 2026 issue. #envhist #envhum

www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

Open Call: Thijssen-Schoute Fellowship 2027 - Huygens Instituut Jaarlijks wordt een fellowship toegekend aan een jonge onderzoeker die onderzoek op dit gebied wil ontwikkelen. Het fellowship wordt aangeboden in samenwerking met de onderzoeksgroep Kennis- en kunstp...

Early career historians (< 3 year post PhD) of science, art and ideas: the Dr. C. Louise Thijssen-Schoute Foundation awards one three-month visiting fellowship annually, hosted by our department @huygensknaw.bsky.social. Deadline for the 2027 fellowship is 15 May: www.huygens.knaw.nl/en/open-call...

We've thought about this case study partly as a contribution to historiographies of scaling and environmental reflexivity taken up by Lydia Barnett, Deborah Coen, and Wilko von Hardenberg. Curious to see what others will make of it. 8/8

The 1731 manuscript also offers a unique window into thinking across different scales in time and space: from the governmental scale of Delfland, to the planetary scale of rising sea levels; and from the ancient past of the second century BCE to the near future. 7/8

What made Cruquius’ theory so interesting? Like many contemporaries, he combined naturalist and antiquarian methods—including such historical maps—to make sense of histories of the Earth and particular geographies. Boundaries between disciplines were often porous (although not absent). 6/8

Cruquius' 1731 theory had a specific goal: to convince the Delfland water board to intervene at the Hoek of Holland, where a shifting sand dune appeared poised to block off the mouth of the river Meuse, as seen in another map made by Cruquius. 5/8

I'd dealt with the latter in my dissertation. Jip had worked on the practices undergirding Cruquius' much-celebrated map of the river Merwede; a map which pioneered the usage of depth contour lines. (doi.org/10.1086/730416) 4/8

Cruquius theory predicted sea level rise, using naturalist and antiquarian methods. Making sense of Cruquius' argument requires a dive into technical debates about water management as well as seventeenth-century antiquarian debates about the changing nature of Holland's geography. 3/8

We began with a 1731 report by hydraulic expert and surveyor Nicolaas Kruik, beter known as Cruquius (1678-1754). In this report for the water board of Delfland, Cruquius developed a theory about the past, present and future of the Dutch river landscapes and coasts, as well as global sea level. 2/8

Finally out in Environmental History! In this article with Jip van Besouw, we explore notions of global sea level rise from the vantage of the 18th-century Dutch Republic. Here are a few of our finds. 1/8 doi.org/10.1086/738533

Gister een draadje over Galileo, vandaag de polders.

Na mijn promotie in 2020 ben ik qua onderzoek best een andere weg ingeslagen. Met 2 beurzen kon ik 3 jaar naar het buitenland (Los Angeles en Cambridge) om daar nieuw onderzoek op te zetten, naar 17e eeuwse inpolderingsprojecten dus.

The Atmosphere in Spatial History: Digital Evidence and Visual Argument* Abstract. Taking its cue from the weather wars that unfolded around the Alps in the eighteenth century — conflicts between neighbouring towns and polities

From the current issue: “The Atmosphere in Spatial History: Digital Evidence and Visual Argument”

by @lscholz.bsky.social (@manchester.ac.uk)

#OpenAccess

doi.org/10.1093/past...

Action group 0.7: ‘To @d66.nl, if you break your promise to retract the budget cuts, you will lose the votes of students and academics forever.’

For anyone interested in earthy, environmental and knowledge histories, I can recommend following the SCARCE project in Vienna: they put up and interesting colloquium series this semester.

Jerry Afriyie: na vijftien jaar is de strijd tegen Zwarte Piet voltooid Mensenrechtenactivist Jerry Afriyie ziet zijn missie als volbracht. In aanloop naar Sinterklaas blikt hij terug op vijftien jaar actie en verandering.

Het succes van protest is deel van mijn historische onderzoek, maar in het recente verleden was er geen succesvollere Nederlandse beweging dan Kick Out Zwarte Piet. Waanzinnig sterk om vandaag, na 15 jaar strijd en successen, te stoppen. Veel bewondering voor Afriyie en consorten.

Opinie | Hoe een mini-kabinet het hoger onderwijs sloopt Dit demissionair kabinet voert ingrijpende onderwijsbezuinigingen door, zonder benodigd mandaat. Dat moet stoppen, zeggen Rens Bod, Remco Breuker en Ingrid Robeyns.

"Het is een democratische absurditeit die we ondertussen bijna normaal zijn gaan vinden: een demissionaire regering die nauwelijks een zesde van de Tweede Kamer vertegenwoordigt, maar die wel doorgaat met beslissingen die diep ingrijpen in de toekomst van ons land. [..]"

www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2025/...

Navajo miners work at the Kerr-McGee uranium mine at Cove, Ariz., on May 7, 1953. Navajo men who worked these mines are nearly 30 times more likely to develop cancer.

Generations of Navajo miners were sent underground to extract uranium for America’s weapons and energy programs. Many were never told the risks. Many never made it out alive.

New from @sarahlazare.bsky.social in partnership with @workdaymagazine.bsky.social

inthesetimes.com/article/they...

Hoe is dat, een jaar lang deelnemen aan een burgerklimaatberaad? Klimaatbeleid: Wat gebeurt er als 175 burgers uit alle hoeken van de samenleving zich zeven weekeinden lang inspannen om de overheid klimaatadvies te geven? „Dit is ook hoe democratie werkt.”

Thrilled to see the Dutch citizens' assembly on climate come to a conclusion. Results will be presented coming Monday! Another test for this democratic tool in the face of accelerating catastrophe.

From the writer of a book about mass extinctions called "The Ends of the World."

Our Almost-Apocalyptic Climate Future By shooting for 3 degrees Celsius of warming, the world could slide toward a more cataclysmic 4 degrees.

Peter Brannen on where this COP (and its sordid predecessors) have left the Earth system: not as bad as predicted earlier, but apocalyptic still. www.theatlantic.com/science/2025...

Post-COP reminder: climate scenarios are useful sci-fi. There are uncertainties about the impacts of policies, actual climate sensitivity, and the feedbacks in Earth's carbon cycle. Among other things.

My week at @historicivertellen.bsky.social has come to an end. For anyone reading Dutch, I spun this long thread, highlighting some of the most interesting finds from my dissertation research.

Wish I could attend this one!

Mining the Past: What is the role of historians in the mining industry? SCARCE Colloquium Speaker: Duncan Money (Independent scholar) University of Vienna Hybrid Event

✨For our second talk in this semester’s colloquium series, @mininghistory.bsky.social will present “Mining the Past: What is the role of historians in the mining industry?”⛏️📜

📅 Date: November 24, 2025

⏰ Time: 3:00–4:30 PM CET

Learn more and register: bit.ly/MiningThePast

#histSci

Hopeful sci-fi?

Voor vanmiddag lees ik met collega's 'Chaos in the Heavens' van Jean-Baptiste Fressoz en Fabien Locher, waarin ze de vergeten geschiedenis klimaatdebat van grofweg 1492 tot midden 20ste eeuw reconstrueren. Goed moment om even door andere klimaatboeken te bladeren.

Het duurde vrij lang voordat stoomgemalen een grote rol kregen in de Nederlandse waterhuishouding, maar met de kennis van nu—iets met kolenverbranding en zeespiegelstijging—krijgen zulke plaatjes een hele andere betekenis.

De klimaatcrisis is volgens Fressoz en Locher een schok omdat vanaf ca. 1900 twee verhalen de overhand hadden gekregen: het Aardse klimaat is op grote tijdschalen vrij stabiel én moderne samenlevingen hebben weinig te vrezen van kleine veranderingen.

Deze prachtige draad maakt echt nieuwgierig!