Daan Jansen

A small wood carving of a murid sits on an otherwise empty desk

The move to a new desk begins...

Gilgamesh the rat and me the human making eye contact

After two weeks of travel I'm finally reunited with my rats :D

A print depicting a man reading in a train with a ghostly devil next to him. The text reads "Danger forever remains your invisible travelling partner. Insure yourself against travel accidents with Fatum" (my translation)

A print depicting a city in disarray: a bus drives into a pit, a car hits a lamp post, a piano is about to fall onto a pram, a man is falling out of a window, and many more disasters. Above it all hangs a bloody sword marked "accidents". The print is captioned "this sword hangs over all your heads! Insure yourself in a timely fashion with the M-Z" (my translations)

Dutch insurance advertisements used to hit different (translations in the alt texts)

A screenshot of google maps showing a train ride of 11+ hrs passing by the Dutch town Breukelen, which gives its name to Brooklyn, NY

No sleep till Breukelen

URL and ALT text to follow.

excited to share the call for the workshop

EXTRACTIVE NATURES / NATURES OF EXTRACTION

happening at @uobrisceh.bsky.social on 6-7 Nov 2025,

made possible by the @britishacademy.bsky.social

deadline: 10 September!

full call below ⤵

#envhist #envhum

Indeed! Wonderful conference and a great panel much enriched by your contribution!

Title page for a rat presentation, titled "Rats! Changing perceptions of (Early) Modern Britain and NL". The image depicts a medieval miniscule of rats rowing a boat

All geared up for a weedy, verminy and ratty discussion at session 12-06 this afternoon at #ESEH2025 🌱🐀🐾

Rapt multispecies audience this morning at the histories of soils and pesticides session at #ESEH2025

Great roundtable session on early modern art as sources for climate change! Tons of thoughts on its applicability to other "invisible" environmental processes, like invasive species 🤔 #eseh2025

An amazing pair of keynotes to kick off #ESEH2025 excited for the rest of the conference!

Last month was the @archaeorattus.bsky.social project's annual meeting and we realised that we're halfway through the project!

Read all about it on our blog! sites.google.com/york.ac.uk/r...

The ‘Loyalty in the Medieval World’ network welcomes proposals which explore the intersections between the concept of ‘loyalty’ and the IMC 2026 theme of ‘temporalities’. Was there a shift in how the concept of loyalty was used and perceived by people across the Middle Ages? To what extent, if at all, were bonds of loyalty an archaic predecessor to the coercive potential of a centralising medieval ‘state’? How did the language (e.g. treue, fides, leal), theories, and practices of loyalty change or stay the same in the medieval period? What can the study of loyalty do for the historian of medieval political society? Submissions could reflect on: • Emotional frameworks of loyalty • Political frameworks of loyalty • Ethical and legal frameworks of loyalty • The theory and practice of loyal behaviour • Loyalty and identity • Loyalty and power • Horizontal loyalties and solidarities • The material culture of loyalty • Contested and/or multiple loyalties • Disloyalty , such as women, children, exiles, and migrants. Please send a paper title, affiliation, and abstract of up to 150 words to Eleanor Bailey ejbailey98@outlook.com, Katy Bennett katy.bennett@york.ac.uk, AND Jenny McHugh j.mchugh@lancaster.ac.uk. Deadline 15th September.

Call for Papers @imc-leeds.bsky.social 2026 ‼️ The 'Loyalty in the Medieval World' network welcomes papers which explore the intersections between the concept of ‘loyalty’ and the conference theme of ‘temporalities’, c.500-1500! Get in touch by 15 September

Rat-nap

Enkidu (a rat) napping in a hammock, his brother's butt is in the background

Back home with my boys 🐀🐀❤️

Conference programme booklet on a notebook

From Zeeland to Scotland, Middelburg to St Andrews, conference to conference to learn all about histories of animal-borne diseases

I got to speak about rat history with some amazing people at the RIAS-DEHN conference in Middelburg this week! (Thanks to @chrmeijer.bsky.social for the photo!)

RATTUS Project - Blog

It's #worldratday! To celebrate, I wrote a pretty fun post for the @archaeorattus.bsky.social project blog about #rats nibbling on #archive material. Check it out! sites.google.com/york.ac.uk/r...

A screenshot of a news broadcast featuring a photo a group of protesters, with me prominently in the centre holding a sign that says "Rich Tice? I'd rather have head lice"

My beautiful sign and I have become the face of #antifa in English rightwing media this weekend after a peaceful protest against #ReformUK in #York! I couldn't be more proud :)

An adorable young rat peeks out of a hoodie

Today marks one year since I moved to the UK to start my ratty PhD journey! Since you can't do a PhD alone, I finally decided to get a friend! Meet Gilgamesh! (Don't worry, he has a brother - bonus points if you can guess his name) #rats

Could I be added to the list too? I work with early modern rats and dogs!

While you may have seen me around on Instagram (@animal_historian), I was never on Twitter so this is all a bit new to me. I’ll probably mostly be (re)posting about rats and other animals in history. So if you’re into that, stay tuned :D 🐀

Meet the Team - Daan Hello! I’m Daan, the resident historian (and only PhD-student) on the RATTUS project. I studied history at the VU in Amsterdam, focusing on ...

I think it’s time I finally introduce myself on these blue skies. I’m Daan, a PhD candidate in Rat History at the RATTUS project in York! If you’d like to know more about me, check out this post on the RATTUS blog: the-rattus-project.blogspot.com/2024/11/meet...