Coordinator

Mano Delea
Bram Mellink
Mart Rutjes

Description and aims

All across society and history, people mobilise, organise, and empower themselves, in order to change existing power structures. Politics is therefore not the prerogative of political leaders, parliaments and governmental institutions. The conviction that a situation - previously understood as given - can be altered, provides a crucial starting point for attempts to acquire and exercise power. But how do people decide what is worth fighting for, how do they organise, what strategies do they employ to achieve their goals? And how have these mechanisms changed over time and place?

The research group Power and Movement(s) examines politics, not as an autonomous sphere, but as a dimension of society at the crossroads of political and social history, focusing on three aspects of ‘the political’: awareness of choice, (self-)organisation, and the ways in which power is acquired and exercised. It focuses on the process, rather than on the outcomes of political struggle, examining  the articulation of political topics, and the constitution of political arenas, as well as their depoliticisation.

The research group has an explicitly diachronic character, bringing together staff members of different periods, from ancient history to the most recent history. Its thematic focus on the societal operation of power dynamics is a subject that resonates with all our members and offers a common ground for discussion and exchange.

Activities

The research group revolves around three types of activities with the following goals:

1. Organising six-weekly reading and research lunches that focus on core publications of socio-political history, and on discussing work-in-progress (such as draft articles and research proposals). Through these sessions, the group builds a shared historiographical framework and a body of research questions. The group has organised these six-weekly meetings since January 2025.
2. Fostering collective knowledge through the integration of research into education. The research group aims to make the history of power and mobilisation more explicitly visible in the history curriculum, focusing particularly on various master programs and the BA research courses (Onderzoeksseminar, Verdiepingsvak I, Verdiepingsvak II).
3. Creating opportunities to reach out to other research groups focusing on socio-political history, among others the Network of Political History: A Social Affair at the Radboud University Nijmegen, the Political History Research Group at Utrecht University, and the Research School for Political History. In the summer of 2025, three of the research group members (Peter van Dam, Bram Mellink, and Mart Rutjes) hosted the annual Summer School of the Research School for Political History with a program on socio-political history.

Members

Josephine van den Bent
Peter van Dam
Maartje van Gelder
Nathan van Kleij
Samuël Kruizinga
Vincent Kuitenbrouwer
Rimko van der Maar
Daniëlle Slootjes
Jouke Turpijn
Tim Verlaan
Jeroen van Zanten
Raoul van Stipriaan
Annelies van der Meij