Dr D.B.G.W. Lyna (Dries)

Dries Lyna is a social and cultural historian of the 17th and 18th centuries, with special interest in civic institutions of the Low Countries and VOC settlements in the Indian Ocean World. He was trained at the Centre for Urban History (University of Antwerp), and went to Duke University and the Getty Research Institute as Fulbright Visiting Scholar. In addition, he has been a guest lecturer at the University of Antwerp, Free University of Brussels, and the Institut d'Etudes Supérieures des Arts in Paris. In the first semester of academic year 2022-23 Dries is a Visiting Scholar at the History Department of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

His current research interest lies in writing social histories of colonial cities, with a focus on eighteenth-century Sri Lanka. Among others he published on VOC institutions and social mobility in Colombo and Galle. In addition he is interested in the family life of former slaves in the suburbs of Colombo, as part of the projects 'Life after slavery' and 'Slavery, forced migration and family history', collaborations with the University of Glasgow of which he is project leader. In the past he published on the urban Low Countries, with a focus on creative economies, art markets and material culture (late 17th -19th centuries).

He is the supervisor of PhD students Luc Bulten (colonial registration and land possession in 18th-century Sri Lanka), Nicholas Michael Chow Sy (social mobility former slaves in 17th-century Manilla) & Joël Edouard (information networks of the Dutch slave trade around the Indian Ocean World, 17th-18th centuries).

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