Catharina Peersman

Affiliated postdoctoral researcher
2020-2022

Research interests

Historical sociolinguistics, medieval French, multilingualism in medieval Flanders

Biography

Catharina was a lecturer in French Studies at the University of Sheffield (UK), from September 2012 to August 2014. As a postdoctoral research fellow, she worked at the University of Minnesota (H. Van Wayenbergh of the Hoover Foundation Fellow for the Belgian American Educational Foundation) and the KULeuven (Research Foundation Flanders – FWO) from Sept. 2009 tot Aug. 2012.

Catharina studied Romance Languages in Leuven (2003), specializing in French Linguistics. For her Master’s Thesis ‘Les chartes en ancien français antérieures à 1300 de l’abbaye de Ninove. Edition et analyse’, she was awarded the F.J. Mertens Prize. In 2004, she was seriously busy specializing in both Medieval Studies and Translation (governmental French & English) while finishing her teaching formation (all at the KULeuven). From October 2004 to September 2009, she was a PhD researcher. She defended her PhD in May 2009 on “L’essor et l’emploi des langues vernaculaires dans les chartes de l’abbaye de Ninove (1137-1350), avec une attention particulière pour l’ancien français” (magna cum laude).

Selected publications

Peersman, C. – Rutten, G. – Vosters, R. 2015. “Chapter 1. Romance-Germanic encounters along the language border: past, present and future.”. In: C. PEERSMAN – G. RUTTEN – R. VOSTERS eds., Past, Present and Future of a Language Border. Germanic-Romance Encounters in the Low Countries. (Language and Social Life 1), 1-16. De Gruyter.

Peersman, C. 2015. “Chapter 5. Constructing identity: language and identity in the narration of the Franco-Flemish conflict (1297-1305)”. In: C. Peersman – G. Rutten – R. Vosters eds., Past, Present and Future of a Language Border. Germanic-Romance Encounters in the Low Countries. (Language and Social Life 1), 91-114. De Gruyter.

Peersman, C. 2012. “Chapter 35. Written Vernaculars in Medieval and Renaissance Times”. In: Hernández-Campoy & Conde-Silvestre eds., Handbook of Historical Sociolinguistics (Blackwell Handbooks in Linguistics), 639-654. Blackwell Publishers.

Peersman, C. 2012. L’essor des langues vernaculaires dans les chartes de Ninove. Perspectives sociolinguistiques sur l’essor et l’emploi de l’ancien français dans les chartes de l’abbaye (1137-1350). Presses académiques francophones. 304p.

Peersman, C. 2009. ‘Une approche actuelle de matériaux médiévaux: les chartes de l’abbaye de Ninove sous l’angle de la sociolinguistique historique’. In : D. Aquino, S. Cotelli, A. Kristol éds., Sociolinguistique historique du domaine gallo-roman. Enjeux et méthodologies, 161-185. Bern : Peter Lang.

Peersman, C. 2008. ‘De opkomst van de volkstalen in de oorkonden van de abdij van Ninove. Case-study van een bewogen eeuw (1250-1350)’. Handelingen van de Koninklijke Zuid-Nederlandse Maatschappij voor Taal-, Letterkunde en Geschiedenis LXI, 129-145.

Peersman, C. 2008. ‘French medieval charters: a lexicographic case-study’. In: M. Mooijaert & M. van der Wal eds., Yesterday’s Words: Contemporary, Current and Future Lexicography, 241-251. Cambridge – Leiden: Cambridge Scholars Press.

Peersman, C. 2006.’Du latin aux langues vernaculaires. Les traces explicites des langues parlées dans les chartes latines’. Studies van de Belgische Kring voor Linguïstiek / Travaux du Cercle Belge de Linguistique / Papers of the Linguistic Society of Belgium 1. [pdf]