Brent Huygh (°2001) is a PhD student at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. He obtained both a BSc degree in Political Science (2019-2022), and a MA in History (2023-2024). In his master’s year, he wrote his master’s thesis on transport and the socio-economic evolution of gateway roads in eighteenth-century Brussels. In the same year, he also interned at the Belgian State Archives, where he produced short informative video clips explaining early modern court cases originating from the Brussels-based Council of Brabant to a broad audience (link). After completing his Master’s degree, Brent started working as a PhD student, and successfully applied for FWO-funding for his project: “Village(r)s in Conflict: Political Expectations and Governance in 17th- and 18th-Century rural Brabant and Limburg” (2025-2029), under the supervision of prof. dr. Klaas Van Gelder. The main goal of this project is to scrutinize village politics in the early modern era, more specifically by looking at popular political expectations, the discourse used to justify these expectations, and the various means in which villagers attempted to enforce them.