Guest researchers
Maria Grever
Historical culture. Historical awareness. Historiography. Heritage. Second World War and popular culture. National identity.
Maria Grever is emeritus professor of Historical Culture and founding director of the Centre for Historical Culture at Erasmus University Rotterdam (EUR). Since September 2020, she has been a research fellow at NL-Lab, KNAW Humanities Cluster.
Grever has led various NWO research projects, including ‘Paradoxes of De-Canonisation (2004-2006)’; ‘Heritage Education, Plurality of Narratives and Shared Historical Knowledge (2009-2014)’; and ‘National narratives in Dutch and English history textbooks (2011-2016)’. As the main applicant, she is currently directing the EUR Research Excellence Initiative programme War! Popular Culture and European Heritage of Major Armed Conflicts (2015-2021) (the co-applicant is Stijn Reijnders) .
Grever has published widely on historical culture, historical consciousness, heritage, the canonisation of historical knowledge and national identity. Her monographs include her cum laude PhD dissertation Strijd tegen de stilte. Johanna Naber (1859-1941) en de vrouwenstem in geschiedenis (1994); with Berteke Waaldijk, Transforming the Public Sphere. The Dutch National Exhibition of Women’s Labour in 1898 (2004); with Kees Ribbens, Nationale identiteit en meervoudig verleden (2007); and with Carla van Boxtel, Verlangen naar tastbaar verleden. Erfgoed, onderwijs en historisch besef (2014). Her most recent book is Inescapable Past. Reflections on a Changing Historical Culture (2020).
She has also co-edited several volumes, including with Harry Jansen, De ongrijpbare tijd. Temporaliteit en de constructie van het verleden (2001); with Siep Stuurman, Beyond the Canon. History for the Twenty-First Century (2007); and with Mario Carretero and Stefan Berger, Palgrave Handbook of Research in Historical Culture and Education (2017). She is currently editor of the Bloomsbury Digital Resource: Historiography and Historical Theory.
Her work has received several awards. In 1996 she received the SNS Bank prize for best PhD dissertation at the University of Nijmegen; in 1997, the Huib de Ruyter prize from the Association of History Teachers in the Netherlands; and in 1998 she received the royal decoration Officer in the Order of Oranje-Nassau. In 2010 she became a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW), and in 2015 she received the Athena Award from Erasmus University. She is also a member of the Council for the Humanities.