Maarten Prak was until his retirement in 2022 - but he is still very active - Professor of Social and Economic History at the Department of History and Art History and is a living encyclopedia concerning the Dutch Golden Age

Focus on Middle Ages and Early Modern history: My research deals with the lives of the inhabitants of European - and especially Dutch - towns during the Middle Ages and Early Modern period. Major topics in my research include: citizenship, institutions, cultural industries, guilds and human capital.

I have been chair of the Humanities Board of the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research NWO (2014-16), a member of the board of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences KNAW (2016-20), and I am currently a member of the board of ALLEA (All European Academies). I have been a visiting scholar at the universities of Exeter (1996, 2002) and Cambridge (2012), at the London School of Economics (2008, 2011), at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris (1992, 2004 and 2006), and at the Westfälische-Wilhems-Universität in Münster (2010).