Dr Christel Annemieke Romein

I am a historian of the early modern period whose work moves between four overlapping fields: the political-institutional history of seventeenth-century Europe, digital legal history, automated text recognition (HTR/ATR) for archival heritage, and the broader application of artificial intelligence to cultural-heritage infrastructure. Trained at Erasmus University Rotterdam, where I defended my dissertation on patriot-rhetoric in Jülich, Hesse-Cassel and Brittany during the 1640s and 1650s — subsequently published as Protecting the Fatherland (Springer, 2021) — I have since held postdoctoral positions at Ghent University (NWO Rubicon), the Huygens Institute (NWO Veni), and now the University of Twente, where I work within the HAICu consortium on making the early modern resolutions of the States of Overijssel digitally accessible.

My current work asks how digital techniques can be brought to bear on early modern legal and administrative sources without flattening their interpretive complexity. I write across distinct scholarly communities — legal historians, political historians, digital humanists, and GLAM professionals — and you may find what is most relevant to your interests through the four research areas below.