PhD Researchers
Annick Gossen
Doctoral candidate at KU Leuven, part of its Research Group of Medieval History. She graduated with a research master’s degree in history from the University of Amsterdam in 2025 and worked in the Dutch heritage sector before starting her doctorate. Her research within the TESTAMENT project focuses on intergenerational power dynamics within families in fifteenth-century Brabant as studied through testamentary and inheritance practices.
Within the TESTAMENT project, I research power dynamics and conflict between parents and their (adult) children in fifteenth-century Brabant, studied through testamentary and inheritance practices. By qualitatively and quantitatively researching testamentary and inheritance law and aldermen’s court records on voluntary jurisdiction, I will chart and analyze the restrictions, opportunities and negotiations faced by multiple generations of the medieval family. This will provide new insights into the increase or decrease of generational control and the importance of diverse family ties in the late Middle Ages, contributing to a better understanding of the family dynamics of freedom and oppression.
Carla Marino
Carla Marino is a PhD candidate at the Jagiellonian University in Cracow. She graduated in Law from the University of Roma Tre in 2023 with a thesis on EU Law. Previously, she graduated in Canon and Civil Law from the Pontifical Lateran University in Rome in 2017 with a thesis on Comparative Procedural Law. She pursued her interest in Comparative Law graduating from Institutum Utriusque Iuris in 2019 and publishing her thesis in 2021. Her academic path is characterized by different education experiences abroad at Institutions such as Australian Catholic University, St Andrews University and University of Tartu. She practiced Law in Ecclesiastical Court, then worked at EU Institutions in Bruxelles.
As part of the TESTAMENT project, her research is focussing on last wills of professors at the Jagiellonian University in Cracow in the late Middle Ages and Early Modern period.
Karolina Ziajka
Graduate of the law programme of Jagiellonian University. Wrote a master's thesis on the topic of liber maleficorum of the town Miechów, a manuscript written between the 16th and 18th centuries. The dissertation focused on criminal procedure, as well as the recorded criminal activity from legal and social perspectives.
Currently pursuing a doctoral degree at Charles University. Working on a thesis regarding testamentary practice in 15th-16th centuries, with consideration of the influence that the Hussite movement had for the content of testaments. The dissertation aims to present the influence of religious beliefs on the last wills through analysis of individual cases and their role in the area of inheritance law.
Marco Lombardo
Having graduated summa cum laude with a Master’s Degree in Law from Roma Tre University (2026), Lombardo focused his Master’s thesis on the officium iudicis, a cornerstone of medieval jurisprudence challenging to translate in modern conceptual terms. Examined as a limit case in the relationship between medieval jurists and Roman law, the officium iudicis provides a privileged perspective for analyzing the significance of the “Legal Renaissance”. Lombardo has developed a solid familiarity with German legal historiography through an Erasmus program at the University of Münster (2023) and participation in the Rechtshistorikertag (September 2026).
The aim of his study within the TESTAMENT Project at the Friedrich-Schiller University of Jena is to examine the development of Saxonian law and legal practices concerning last wills in the early modern period, focusing on the interaction between traditional Saxonian law and ius commune. He will investigate, inter alia, the legislative process behind the 1572 Kursächsische Konstitutionen, exploring how political, legal, scientific, and societal interests shaped legislation and judicial practice.
Roel Hendriks
Doctoral candidate in the Department of Roman Law and Legal History at KU Leuven. He previously completed a research master’s degree in History at the University of Amsterdam, where his research focused on the urban environments of the medieval Low Countries. His main research interests lie in social and economic history, with a particular emphasis on interpersonal credit and trust in society and finance.
The project, titled ‘Joint last wills of spouses in the university town of Leuven (ca. 1550-1580)’, focuses on the premodern Leuven microcosmos of legal scholars, aldermen, and ordinary people. It investigates the interplay between learned and local law, and the role these dynamics played in shaping spouses’ (un)freedom to dispose of their goods posthumously. As such, this project sheds new light on the legal, material, and emotional ties governing human relationships, both during life and beyond death.
Svitlana Tryhub
Svitlana Tryhub is a first-year PhD candidate at the Doctoral School of Humanities and a research assistant at the Faculty of History, University of Warsaw. Svitlana holds a master’s degree from the Future of Heritage programme, offered jointly by the Ukrainian Catholic University and the University of Nottingham. Her research interests include social history, everyday life in early modern cities, and public humanities.
Under the supervision of Prof. Agnieszka Bartoszewicz (University of Warsaw) and Prof. Adrian Schmidt-Recla (Friedrich Schiller University Jena), she examines how last wills offer insights into the everyday experiences that shaped family life in Old and New Warsaw in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.