Professeur

  Faculté de Philosophie et Sciences sociales
  Centre de recherche Mondes Modernes & Contemporains
  Campus du Solbosch - CP 133/01
  Avenue F.D. Roosevelt, 50
  B-1050 Bruxelles


  Kenneth.Bertrams@ulb.be
  +32 (0)2 650 39 56
  Bureau NA5.110

Bio

Kenneth Bertrams is professor at the Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB). In early 2019 he has been appointed extraordinary professor at Maastricht University-FASoS through an endowed chair by the Stichting Historie der Techniek (SHT). He teaches modern economic history and social history of science and technology. He took part in a research project on the history of the Solvay Company with Nicolas Coupain and Ernst Homburg (1863-2013) which gave way to two books (Cambridge UP, 2013). He has recently completed a business history of the pharmaceutical group UCB (Lannoo 2018) and of the multinational brewer AB-InBev (Oxford UP, 2020). His other research interests include the international circulation of philanthropic models and the political history of scientists during and after World War I.

CV

  • 2019-2024 : SHT-Chair, History of Science & Technology, University of Maastricht
  • 2017-current : Professor, Université libre de Bruxelles, Brussels
  • 2016 : Membre ordinaire de la Classe des Lettres, des Sciences Morales et Politiques de l'Académie Royale de Belgique
  • 2015-current : holder of the Kurgan-van Hentenryk Chair in Business History (Solvay Brussels School of Economics and Management, ULB)
  • 2015-2017: Assistant Professor, Université libre de Bruxelles, Brussels
  • 2007-2015: Research Associate, Fonds National de la recherche scientifique, Belgium (F.R.S.-FNRS)

Travaux sélectionnés

  • [with Julien del Marmol, Sander Geerts, and Eline Poelmans] Becoming the World’s Biggest Brewer: Artois, Piedboeuf, and Interbrew, 1880-2000, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2020, 395 p.
  • [with Renaud Bardez] “The ‘Union Académique Internationale’: a laboratory of scientific diplomacy during the interwar period”, From a Republic of Scholars to a Community of Researchers. Perspectives on the History of the International Union of Academies (UAI), 1919-2019, Brepols, 2019, pp. 23-41.
  • [with Geerdt Magiels] Men and Molecules. 100 years of Chemistry and Life Sciences in Belgium, Brussels, Mardaga – Essenscia, 2019 (translations available in French and Dutch), 240 p.
  • The First Ninety Years: UCB, 1928-2018, Tielt, Lannoo, 2019.
  • [with Sabine Rudischhauser] « German ambitions and Belgian expectations: Social insurance and industrial relations in occupied Belgium, 1940-1944 », in Kiran K. Patel and Sandrine Kott (eds.), Nazism across Borders : the Social Policies of the Third Reich and their Global Appeal, Oxford, Oxford University Press (Studies of the German Historical Institute,), 2018, pp. 389-412.
  •  “The domestic uses of Belgian–American ‘mutual understanding’: the Commission for Relief in Belgium Educational Foundation, 1920–1940”, Journal of Transatlantic Studies, 13 (4), 2015, pp. 326-343. (http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14794012.2015.1088325)
  • [with Nicolas Coupain and Ernst Homburg] Solvay. History of a Multinational Family Firm, Cambridge Univ. Press, 2013, 630 p.
  • Solvay. A Company in History, Cambridge Univ. Press, 2013 (translations available in French and Dutch).