Supervisor: prof. dr. Ido de Haan (Utrecht University)

In this tutorial, we will discuss the very general, yet at the same time crucial question ‘what is political history?’ The discipline of political history has changed quite dramatically in the last couple of decades. From a well-established, yet also rather stuffy history of national political institutions, it has become a vibrant study of the political as it manifests itself in a variety of places and a multiplicity of forms, and is informed by various disciplines, ranging from law and philosophy to political science and anthropology. In this tutorial, we discuss reflections on the history of ‘the political’ and invite you to reflect on your use of the term, how your research is a contribution to an interdisciplinary political history, and how you account for processes like politicization and depoliticization.