Biography
I am now finishing a project funded by the NWO VIDI (800,000 euro), which goes by the title "Positively Shocking! The Redistributive Impact of Mass Mortality through Epidemic Diseases and Violent Conflict in Early Modern Northwest Europe".
This project has made four substantial contributions – many of which will slowly be visible in published work over the next year or so in various papers, one special issue The History of the Family: Special Issue: Household, Family, and Community Responses to the Direct Costs of Epidemics (taylorandfrancis.com), and a new book entitled Epidemic Disease and Society in the Premodern Low Countries: Inequality, Community, and Gender Disaster Studies | Amsterdam University Press (aup.nl).
First, in contrast to a view in the literature that incrementally increasing economic inequality in the premodern period was a “naturally reinforcing process” with a logic of its own, we suggest that in many contexts – especially peasant-based rural communities – there was an intrinsic lifecycle model of “de-accumulation”, and hence, an inherent limitation on the increase in inequality.
Second, rather than the “levelling effect” of epidemics posited in some of the literature, we suggest that the most interesting part of the epidemic-redistribution link is not on how epidemics managed to shift and transfer resources within communities, but how (certain members of) communities managed to prevent substantial redistribution from taking place. Epidemics provoked resistance to change down many different lines.
Third, we make a strong claim for the importance of the “direct” economic costs of epidemics – which contrary to the redistribution literature – were often inegalitarian as they bore most heavily on the disadvantaged within communities.
Fourth, rather than epidemics as a vehicle for massive structural change – sometimes seen as “shocks” causing rupture points within societies and economies – we make a case for these outbreaks to be seen as effective “windows” through which aspects of vulnerability can be observed which do not necessarily come to the fore during “normal times”.
Over my career, I have published widely across many different disciplines of history and related fields – I have more than 40 international peer-reviewed articles and chapters and have 3 books (with a 4th on the way) including an open access synthesis of all the most up-to-date thinking on historical disasters with CUP library.oapen.org/bitstream/id/93f950ad-464d-4002-9aaa-3e1a3b3fe823/Disasters_and_History.pdf and an open access study on how epidemics have been visualized across the long term of cinematic history with Routledge library.oapen.org/bitstream/id/6c39960d-e611-4418-a697-1b6e6b1a2140/9781000540765.pdf. In recognition of my contribution to historical research, I am a fellow of the Royal Historical Society (UK).
I am happy to hear from any prospective students (BA/MA/PhD) interested in the broad domain of environmental hazards, famines and diseases in the past, and their implications for social and economic development over the long term.
Erasmus School of History, Culture and Communication
- curtis@eshcc.eur.nl
More information
Work
- Daniel R. Curtis (2024) - Trade, Production, and Disease in the Middle Ages - doi: 10.4324/9780415791182-RMEO413-1 - [link]
- Daniel R. Curtis (2024) - Plague and Epidemic Disease in the Northern Parts of the Low Countries, 1349-1450: Evidence, Limitations, and Implications - Tijdschrift voor Sociale en Economische Geschiedenis, 21 (2), 75-103 - doi: 10.52024/7gr34y91 - [link]
- Phạm Thùy Dung, Daniel R. Curtis & Qijun Han (2023) - From disease incubation to disease receipt: Representing epidemics and race in pre- and post-second world war American cinema (1931–1939 and 1950–1962) - Journal of Media History, 26 (2), 1-31 - doi: 10.18146/tmg.842
- Daniel Curtis (2023) - Review of Adam Sundberg. Natural Disasters and the Closing of the Dutch Golden Age: Floods, Worms, and the Cattle Plague. (Studies in Environment and History). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022) - American Historical Review, 128 (4), 1929-1930 - doi: 10.1093/ahr/rhad463
- Daniel R. Curtis (2023) - Representing historical disasters - Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis, 136 (3), 297-298 - doi: 10.5117/tvg2023.3.014.curt - [link]
- Daniel Curtis (2023) - Database of those recorded as deceased in the Haarlem "bells and graves" register, 1412-1547 - doi: 10.25397/eur.24204024
- Qijun Han & Daniel Curtis (2023) - Heroism and Healthcare Workers in Epidemic Films - doi: 10.1007/978-3-031-17125-3_349-1
- Daniel Curtis (2023) - Claire Weeda, Robert Stein, and Louis Sicking (eds), Communities, Environment and Regulation in the Premodern World: Essays in Honour of Peter Hoppenbrouwers (Turnhout: Brepols; Comparative Rural History Network vol 20, 2022) - Agricultural History Review, 71 (1), 130-131 - [link]
- Daniel Curtis (2023) - The Erasmian Way?: Integrating Historical Analysis with Contemporary Challenges - Erasmus Student Journal of History Studies (History Collective), 1 (1), 79-84 - [link]
- Daniel Curtis (2022) - Reduction in grain pollen indicates population decline, but not necessarily Black Death mortality - Nature Ecology and Evolution, 6 (11), 1-2 - doi: 10.1038/s41559-022-01862-4
- Daniel Curtis (2024) - International Medieval Congress 2024 (Organiser)
Activiteit: Organising and contributing to an event › Academic - Daniel Curtis (2024) - GEWINA: (Keynote speaker)
Activiteit: Invited talk › Academic - Daniel Curtis (2023) - Premodern Land Redistribution and (De)Accumulation Strategies: An Analysis of a Seventeenth-Century Rural Community (Oudenbosch, west Brabant) (Speaker)
Activiteit: Oral presentation › Academic - Daniel Curtis (2023) - Agrarian Capitalism in the Preindustrial Low Countries (Speaker)
Activiteit: Invited talk › Academic - Daniel Curtis & Bram van Besouw (2023) - Economic History Society Annual Conference 2023 (Participant)
Activiteit: Attending an event › Academic - Vidhi Chaudhri, Daniel Curtis & Mariangela Lavanga (2023) - ESHCC Societal Engagement Award 2023 (Event) (Chair)
Activiteit: Membership of committee › Academic - Daniel Curtis (2023) - History, Health and Healing: Spring Meeting 2023 (Participant)
Activiteit: Attending an event › Academic - Daniel Curtis (2023) - Department of History (Organisational unit) (Member)
Activiteit: Membership of committee › Academic - Daniel Curtis (2022) - Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (NWO) (External organisation) (Member)
Activiteit: Membership of committee › Academic - Daniel Curtis (2022) - Contemporary Global Issues Roundtable: Inequality (Participant)
Activiteit: Attending an event › Academic
- Daniel Curtis (2022) - Fellow of the Royal Historical Society
- DR (Daniel) Curtis (2020) - Scientific and Technological Achievement Award (STAA)
- DR (Daniel) Curtis (2019) - Open Access Book Grant
- DR (Daniel) Curtis (2018) - NWO VIDI
- DR (Daniel) Curtis (2018) - Feminae: Medieval Women and Gender Index, Article of the Month
- DR (Daniel) Curtis (2015) - NWO VENI
- DR (Daniel) Curtis (2014) - Scouloudi Historical Research Award
- DR (Daniel) Curtis (2013) - British Academy for the Humanities and Social Sciences / Leverhulme Trust, Small Research Grant
- DR (Daniel) Curtis (2009) - Cambridge Members’ History Prize (2nd)
Bachelor-1 paper
- Year Level
- BA-1, BA-1
- Year
- 2024
- Course Code
- CH1108
Capitalism and Inequality
- Year Level
- BA-2, BA-2
- Year
- 2024
- Course Code
- CH2204
Epidemic Disease, Famine and Development
- Year Level
- BA-2, BA-2
- Year
- 2024
- Course Code
- CH2222
Bachelor Thesis
- Year Level
- BA-3, BA-3, Pre-master
- Year
- 2024
- Course Code
- CH3100
Master Thesis
- Year Level
- MA, MA, MA, MA
- Year
- 2024
- Course Code
- CH4050
Applied History MA Project
- Level
- MA
- Year Level
- MA
- Year
- 2024
- Course Code
- CH4052