Research

Donya Ahmadi

Donya Ahmadi is an intersectional feminist scholar and assistant professor of International Relations at the RUG. She teaches an Msc Research Seminar titled 'Race, Class, and Gender Intersectionality' at the department of International Relations and International Organization. Her current research concerns an intersectional and race-critical analysis of the notion of assimilation of Iran's various historically-rooted ethnic groups into a 'centralised' identity, and how this process of assimilation is gendered, class-based and racial, manifested through everyday practices, and fuels migration within and without Iran.

Courses:

Msc Research Seminar: Race, Class, and Gender Intersectionality

Recent publications:

• Ahmadi, Donya (2018). Is diversity our strength? An analysis of the facts and fancies of diversity in Toronto. City, Culture and Society.
• Ahmadi, Donya (2018). Introducing Intersectionality/Mary Romero. Ethnic and Racial Studies. DOI: 10.1080/01419870.2018.1520275.

Antoon de Baets

Antoon De Baets is professor of History, Ethics and Human Rights at the University of Groningen. He has taught non-Western history for over twenty years (1989–2010). He is the author of more than 200 publications, mainly about the censorship of history and the ethics of historians, including Responsible History (2009) and Crimes against History (2019).

A complete cv (29 pages) is at http://www.concernedhistorians.org/va/cv.pdf.

Courses:

• BA1: Globalization (2013–2021).
• BA2: Historical Writing in and over the Non-Western World (2009–2012); Masters of Non-Western Historiography (partim: America and Africa; partim: Middle East, Asia and Oceania) (1999–2002); “Lieux de Mémoire” and “Invented Traditions” in the Third World” (1994–1998); Contributions of Non-Western Cultures to the West (1989–1994).
• BA3: Theory, Methods, and Sources of Non-Western History (2001–2009); The Political Use of History in Latin America, the Caribbean, the Middle East and North Africa in the twentieth century (2003–2007); The Assassins of Memory (partim: Africa and Asia; partim: America) (1995–1998).
  

Recent publications:

• “Historians Killed for Political Reasons in Ibero-America (1920–2020),” Revista de História das Ideias / Journal of the History of Ideas, 39 no. 2 (2021), 13–47.
• “Censorship by European States of Views on Their Past as Colonizers,” in Laurent Martin, ed., Les Censures dans le monde, XIXe−XXIe siècle (Censorship in the world, 19th-21st centuries) (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2016), 229−245.
• “Eurocentrism,” in: Thomas Benjamin, ed., Encyclopedia of Western Colonialism since 1450 (3 volumes; Detroit etc.: Macmillan/Thomson Gale, 2007), 456–461 (Reproduced also on the website What-When-How: In Depth Tutorials and Information at http://what-when-how.com/western-colonialism/eurocentrism-western-colonialism/).
• “Censorship,” in: Thomas Benjamin, ed., Encyclopedia of Western Colonialism since 1450 (3 volumes; Detroit etc.: Macmillan/Thomson Gale, 2007), 197–204 (Reproduced on the website What-When-How: In Depth Tutorials and Information at http://what-when-how.com/western-colonialism/censorship-western-colonialism).
• Forthcoming: “Jawaharlal Nehru,” in Daniel Woolf and Marnie Hughes-Warrington, History from Loss: A Global Introduction to Histories Written from Defeat, Colonization, Exile, and Imprisonment (London: Routledge, 2023).

Barbara Henkes

Barbara Henkes works as a historian Contemporary History at the University of Groningen. In her research and teaching she investigates how individual and collective memories of violent forms of exclusion affect contemporary societies. Her current research focusses on the postcolonial relations between the Netherlands, Europe and South Africa. Besides, she published in cooperation with students, archivists and amateur historians Traces of the Slavery. Past in Groningen (2016) and in Friesland (2021). These activities led to more public history projects, such as ‘Bitterzoet Erfgoed. Groningers en de slavernij’ (an event from Febr-Sept 2022). This project is a partnership of several heritage institutions in the city and province of Groningen that wishes to contribute to more decolonial forms of knowledge production in the public sphere.

Courses:

• MA1: Oral history - Life stories & the colonial past in the present (since 2016)
• MA1/2: Politieke en culturele overdracht tussen (post)koloniaal Europa en Zuidelijk Afrika vanaf het eind van de 19e eeuw tot het eind van de 20e eeuw (2016; 2018)
• MA1/2: Transnational families and kinship networks from the 19th Century to postcolonial times (2020)
• BA 2: Doing ‘race’ in the age of imperialism and decolonization, 1850-1950 (2017)

Etc.

After spring 2022 I will no longer be structurally involved in education at the RUG; possibly as a guest lecturer.

Recent publications:

• Barbara Henkes, Negotiating Racial Politics in the Family. Transnational histories touched by National Socialism and Apartheid (Leiden: Brill, 2020).
• Barbara Henkes, “The Voortrekkers, on their way to Pretoria, 1952”: Doing race in life writing from South Africa to the Netherlands. In: Eds. B. Boter, M. Rensen & G. Scott-Smith,
• UNHINGING THE NATIONAL FRAMEWORK. Perspectives on transnational life writing (Leiden:Sidestone Press Academics, 2020) 47-64.
• Barbara Henkes, Sporen van het slavernijverleden in Fryslân met wandel- en fietsroutes (Groningen: Uitgeverij Passage, 2021).

Yuliya Hilevych

Yuliya Hilevych is an Assistant Professor in the Economic and Social History Group at RUG. Her primary area of interest is comparative social history of population and health, with a special focus on gender, reproduction, social relations and inequalities during the long 20th and 21st Century. Her geographical areas of expertise covers Ukraine, the Netherlands and Britain, and she has also worked on the countries in Central Asia, and West and East Africa.

Courses:

• Human-inflicted Disasters in History. Epicentre – East-Central Europe (MA level, RUG)

Rachel Johnston-White

Rachel Johnston-White teaches and conducts research on religion, politics, and human rights in 20th-century Western Europe. Her interests include the uses and misuses of Christianity during the French wars of decolonization, as well as the ways that different faiths relate to each other and to secular states. By investigating the political uses of theology in contemporary Europe, Rachel wishes to shed light on what factors can lead religion to be an anti-racist and decolonial force - or the opposite.

Recent publications related to anti-racism/decolonization:

• Rachel M. Johnston-White, “The Christian Anti-Torture Movement and the Politics of Conscience in France,” Past & Present (forthcoming)
• Rachel M. Johnston-White, "A New Primacy of Conscience? Conscientious Objection, French Catholicism and the State during the Algerian War," Journal of Contemporary History 54: 1 (2019) https://doi.org/10.1177/0022009417714315

Lucas van Milders

I write and teach on decolonial philosophy, critical international relations, and radical politics in a global context. I am currently writing a book Undoing Epistemicide: Decolonising Hermeneutics and Prefiguring Autonomy. You can find more about my work on my personal website.

Courses:

• IR Beyond Europe (3rd BA)
• Decolonising Security (MA)
  

Recent publications

Lucas Van Milders. 'White Hallucinations’ Postcolonial Studies (2021)

Lucas Van Milders & Harmonie Toros. ‘Violent International Relations’ European Journal of International Relations (2020)

Iva Pesa

Iva Pesa teaches contemporary African and environmental history at the RUG. Building on long-term fieldwork in Zambia and DR Congo, her research seeks to document underrepresented historical experiences. Through oral history, learning local languages and establishing close collaborations with African academic partners, Iva wishes to contribute to more decolonial forms of knowledge production.

Courses you teach/have taught related to anti-racism/decolonisation:

• BA2 Regional topics: 'Development' in Africa
  

Recent publications related to anti-racism/decolonisation

• Miles Larmer et al. (eds.), Across the Copperbelt: Urban & Social Change in Central Africa's Borderland Communities (Oxford, James Currey, 2021).
• Iva Pesa, 'Between Waste and Profit: Environmental Values on the Central African Copperbelt', The Extractive Industries and Society (2020), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.exis.2020.08.004

Clemens Six

My research is on religion and political secularism in decolonizing South and Southeast Asia.

I am less interested in the continuities since the colonial era but rather in how these societies (i.e. their elites) re-invented themselves in terms of the management of religious diversity, majority-minority relations, social and political exclusion, and ideas on the future. As I see it, anti-racism should move away from the predominant transatlantic perspective and acquire a truly global historical approach.

Courses:

• Research seminar (MA): “Does this really change everything? How the climate crisis alters the way we write history.”
• Research seminar (MA): “Transnational anti-imperialism, 1900-1970.”

Maarten Zwiers

I specialize in rural studies and the history of U.S. race relations, with a focus on the southern states. My current research project "Race Land: The Ecology of Segregation" investigates the environmental and global impact of Jim Crow segregation and the formation of transnational authoritarian alliances during the Cold War era. In the past I have published about political change in the U.S. South, white supremacist politics, and populism.

Courses:

• The Politics of Slavery and Segregation (Political History, 2nd year)
• White Privilege: Systemic Racism in the United States (kernvak, 3rd year)
  

Website:

• https://racelandproject.com

Publications:

• Jim Crow Democracy: The U.S. South and Racialized Policy-Making in the Post-World War II Era," International Journal for History, Culture and Modernity 7:1 (2019): 547-565, https://doi.org/10.18352/hcm.570.
• Senator James Eastland: Mississippi's Jim Crow Democrat (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2015).