Events

Flora, Cosmos, Salvatio: Pre-modern Academic Institutions and the Spread of Ideas

While good ideas can emerge anywhere, it takes a community to develop and disseminate them. In this Quantitative History webinar, David de la Croix of UCLouvain will reconstruct how interpersonal connections formed through institutional affiliations across premodern Europe (1084–1793), where roughly 200 universities and 150 academies of sciences housed thousands of scholars and produced an extensive network of intellectual exchange. By modelling the spread of ideas on this academic landscape, David and his co-authors find exposure patterns that align with observed urban developments—such as botanic gardens, astronomical observatories, and Protestantism. Scholars’ mobility and multiple affiliations sustained diffusion, and counterfactual simulations highlight the bridging role of scientific academies. He will also show that the spread of ideas through the affiliation network was locally fragile but globally robust, underscoring academia as a key ingredient of early European development.

David de la Croix’s co-authors: Rossana Scebba (UCLouvain and KU Leuven), Chiara Zanardello (Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse)

Discussant: Ying Bai, Professor, Department of Economics, The Chinese University of Hong Kong

Date: May 14, 2026

Time: 16:00 – 17:30
16:00 (Hong Kong/Beijing/Singapore)
04:00 (New York)|01:00 (Los Angeles)|09:00 (London)|17:00 (Tokyo)|18:00 (Sydney)

Venue: Zoom Webinar

Language: English

The Quantitative History (QH) Webinar Series aims to provide researchers, teachers, and students with an online intellectual platform to keep up to date with the latest research in the field, promoting the dissemination of research findings and interdisciplinary use of quantitative methods in historical research. The QH Webinar Series, now entering its sixth year, is co-organized by the Centre for Quantitative History at the HKU Business School and the International Society for Quantitative History in partnership with the Hong Kong Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences. The Series is now substantially supported by the Areas of Excellence (AoE) Scheme from the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China (Project No. [AoE/B-704/22-R]).

Conveners: Professors Zhiwu Chen & Chicheng Ma