Professor of medieval history at the University of Lille, I completed my PhD at the University of Paris IV Sorbonne in 2002, which was published in the [SEUH] series by Brepols in 2004, under the title: La ville des cérémonies. Essai sur la communication politique dans les anciens Pays-Bas bourguignons. After a postdoctoral position at Ghent University, within Professor Marc Boone’s team (2002-2004), I was elected as a Lecturer in Lille. Authorised to supervise research (HDR) since 2013, I was elected professor at the same university in 2014. I published the opus of my habilitation in 2016: Le Royaume inachevé des ducs de Bourgogne with Belin editor. A revised English version has been available since 2022 under the title The Illusion of the Burgundian State (Manchester University Press).
Elected as a senior member of the Institut Universitaire de France (2018-2023), I initiated a reflection on the discourses and ideas surrounding political innovation at the end of the Middle Ages during those years.
My research focuses on the ancient Burgundian Low Countries and on political ideologies both in court and in the city. In this context, I am interested in urban history, political cultures and ideologies, with a particular emphasis on comparative perspectives. The question of the nature and evolution of the State at the end of the Middle Ages and during the early modern period is at the heart of these investigations. The concepts of newness, the idea of reform and, more generally, the mastery of time in the expression of power are the focus of my current research within the Sinergia Project.
Differential history is a new method of investigation that I’m currently developing to capture the multiplicity of the present experiences of the societies central to my research.