Huub Sanders

• Email: huubsanders@xs4all.nl
• Department: Fellow

Huub Sanders (1953) studied social and economic history at the University of Leiden. After graduation in 1980 (MA) he joined the IISH as a conscientious objector. He was involved in various projects combatting backlogs in the collections department, also as a project employee. In addition to his work he finished in 1984 a postdoctoral course at the University of Amsterdam in Library Science. From 1988 to 2000 he was head of the department Document Services and Collection Management. From 2000 until his retirement in 2019 he was curator, with a focus on image material and later on the archives of International Organizations and archives of social movements from North West Europe.

Next to these tasks he was the secretary of the Dutch Association for History and Infomatics (VGI) from 1999 to 2005 and in the same period editor of its journal Historia & Informatica. From 2004 to 2010 he was the secretary of the board of the Tijdschrift voor Sociale en Economische Geschiedenis (TSEG)  = the Low Countries Journal of Social and Economic History. From 2014 to 2019 he was the president of the Friends of the IISH and editor-in-chief of its journal On the Waterfront. From 2020 until 2023 he was a member of the jury of the ‘Volkskrant IISG scriptieprijs’ (Volkskrant IISG master thesis award).

Because of his interest in the history of the IISH he became involved in issues regarding the restitution of archives, stolen in the Second World War, which had ended up in the former Soviet Union. Also form this interest he started a research into the history of the IISH in the form of a PhD research. For support he followed the Advanced Training in Economic and Social History of the N.W. Posthumus Institute which he finished in 2015. He completed his dissertation in 2019 at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, "Het virus der betrokkenheid": Het Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis in het krachtenveld van sociale geschiedenis, sociale bewegingen en collecties, 1935 – 1989. At the same time a slightly edited version appeared with AUP: Het virus der betrokkenheid : Het Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis 1935-1989.

His research interest focuses on the historiography of social history, the history of collections and research institutions in history and social history and biographical studies relevant to this field.

Huub Sanders — Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) (voor publicaties)