Leo Lucassen appointed as director of the International Institute of Social History (IISH)
The KNAW appoints Leo Lucassen as director of the International Institute of Social History (IISH). Earlier this week it was already announced that the current director Henk Wals will leave the IISH to become director at KNAW Institute DANS. Both will start in their new positions at the beginning of April.
Lucassen has been research director at the IISH since 2014, he also holds the chair Global Labour and Migration History in Leiden and is a deputy professor at the University of Aalborg (Denmark). Lucassen specializes in global migration history, urban history, labour history, state formation, eugenics, and other socio-political developments in modern states. Lucassen is a former fellow of the New School for Social Research in New York and The Netherlands Insitute for Avanced Study (NIAS). In 2011 he became a member of Academia Europaea and last year he was elected member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. Lucassen is chairman of the editorial committee of the International Review of Social History (IRSH) and member of the editorial board of the Journal of Global History (JGH).
About the IISH
The IISH is one of the most important international centres for research into socioeconomic history. The institute provides access to the world's richest socioeconomic-historical (data) collection, brings together researchers from all over the world and provides publication channels. The IISH itself conducts excellent research into the global historical development, functioning and consequences of social inequality in relation to the development of labour relations. The results are shared both within science and with society. Moreover, by safeguarding the (sometimes threatened) heritage of social movements, the institute fulfils an essential social function. Since 2016, the IISH, together with the Huygens Institute for Dutch History and the Meertens Institute, has formed the KNAW Humanities Cluster, in which the institutes jointly carry out research projects and work closely together in business operations and digital research infrastructure.
