News

Op vrijdag 11 april 2025 overleed fotograaf, schrijver en tentoonstellingsmaker Ewald Vanvugt, enkele dagen voor zijn 82e verjaardag.  

The 15th  European Social Science History Conference took place in Leiden from 26 to 29 March! During these four days of the conference, there were more than 1500 visitors and participants in around 400 different panel sessions.

A coalition of Amsterdam based Archives, Museums and Historical institutes* with the generous support of the Insinger Foundation has taken the initiative for a five-year programme that offers three two-month long fellowships per year for curators, archivists and historians in the field of slavery history.

On 7 March, the eve of International Women's Day, Francisca de Haan (prof. emerita of Gender Studies and History ) received a Suffrage Science Award for 2025. The prize is awarded annually to outstanding female scientists.

At the end of last year, under the leadership of Thijs van Leeuwen and Frank de Jong, the IISH began preparations to digitise collections related to Indonesia/the former Dutch East Indies (Indische collections) and make them available to the Programma Indisch Erfgoed Digitaal (PIED).

Are you a scholar in the humanities, social sciences, or economics ready to tackle on a research project regarding the development of Iran between 18th and 20th century? Then why not apply for the Prince Dr Sabbar Farman-Farmaian Fellowships at the IISH?

Wieke Metzlar went home with the Volkskrant-IISG thesis award 2024 for her thesis on patterns and determinants of excess mortality among girls in Maastricht between 1864 and 1930. Her thesis stood out for its originality and clarity.

On Friday 24 January Matthias van Rossum gave his inaugural lecture titled De ‘jongens’ van Bontekoe? Over nut en noodzaak van mondiale geschiedenissen van kolonialisme en arbeid at the Radboud University. Van Rossum was appointed professor of the Special Chair in Global Histories of Labour and Colonialism, which was jointly established by the IISH and the Radboud University, since 1 February 2024.

We are deeply saddened to share the news of the passing of our dear colleague and friend, Ömercan Şamlı (Mercan), who left us in December 2024.

We received the sad news that our former colleague Piet Lourens passed away on December 10. His close colleague and former research director Jan Lucassen wrote an In Memoriam.

On 3 December, the King, patron of the KNAW, visited the IISH. After a tour of the archives, which covered the history of the IISH, the King talked to researchers and collection specialists in the reading room about the various projects of the IISH. 

Since 2020, the IISH has been involved in the joint project program “Open Archief,” together with Sound & Vision and New Institute. Within this program, several exhibitions and workshops have already taken place, to increase knowledge about creative reuse of archives among both artists and heritage institutions.