Mr. Seán Ivory, the Mr. Hugo Weiland Prize Winner for Best Thesis in Central European studies, presents his thesis research
On Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2025, Mr. Seán Ivory (VU) presented part of his prize-winning research in a lunch talk entitled Let Sleeping Dogs Lie: The Politics of Emotion in the Pamphlets of the De Hondt Affair During the Small Brabant Revolution (1787).
According to his thesis supervisor, our colleague and friend Dr. Jonathan Singerton (VU); “Seán uncovered a topic that appears only scantly in the literature but at the time generate an immense amountof political discord between the inhabitants of the Austrian Netherlands and court of Vienna over the extradition of the Brussels merchant Jean-François de Hondt.” For his analysis of this affair, Singerton continues, “Seán employed a emotions historical perspective that sought to advance the discussions of revolutionary political sentiments and, at the same time, expand our usual understandings about the fermentation and origins of the Brabant Rebellion.”
The prize committee for the 2025 Mr. Hugo Weiland Prize agreed that Mr. Ivory’s thesis was “exemplary” on two registers: it’s “deftness when handling primary sources (based on pamphlets written about the subsequent trail and court case) as well as the impressive assembly of wider literature used to buttress his investigation.” Mr. Ivory won the 2025 Mr. Hugo Weiland Prize. It was a pleasure to welcome him to present his thesis work to the Central European Studies community at Leiden and make us reconsider the Habsburg history which “happened” in the Habsburg Netherlands.
