Bram Hilkens

Bram is a PhD candidate at the Erasmus University Rotterdam, employed at dr. Daniel Curtis' VIDI-project 'Positively Shocking'. He is mostly occupied with the redistributive effects of epidemic mortality in the seventeenth-century Low Countries. After obtaining an MA in Cultural History at Utrecht University, specializing in the history of hip-hop culture and finishing a thesis on the historical position of L.A. rapper Kendrick Lamar, Bram decided to somewhat radically change direction by working as a research assistant at Bas van Bavel's ERC-project on disasters in early modern northwestern Europe. Bram is specifically interested in the mechanisms and experience of inequality, and the effect of shocks thereon.