My name is Maarten Van Dijck and I am an assistant professor at the History Department of the Erasmus University Rotterdam. Although I am working in the Netherlands, I still live in Belgium, the country where I was born and received my education in history. As a historian, I am interested in all aspects of early modern urban history. I studied late medieval and early modern interpersonal violence for my Ph.D. and, afterward, I got interested in the evolution of associational life since the Middle Ages. Currently, I am working on a comparative study of business communities in seventeenth-century Rotterdam, New Amsterdam and Cape Town to understand the rise of global inequality. GLOCAL helps me to think about the local impact of processes of globalization between 1500 and today. The interdisciplinary background of both students and professors offers a fertile ground for discussing new ideas on business history, economic development, urban studies etc. I am married and have two children. I split my leisure time between going to the movies with my wife, building Lego houses with my oldest son and going to football games with my youngest one. I love long summer holidays in France and Italy!