‘Trained as a political scientist and historian at the University of Amsterdam, I am keen to emphasize the political in my historical research‘.
PhD candidate and OPG member Boris van Haastrecht speaks about his research into Dutch statesman Piet Oud (1886-1968).

Dutch statesman Piet Oud (1886-1968)  spent his life promoting his vision of democracy. Oud, a progressive liberal, first entered national politics when he was elected a Member of Parliament in 1917. During a long and varied career, he was a Minister of Finance during the Great Depression, wartime mayor of Rotterdam, and postwar leader of the Volkspartij voor Vrijheid en Democratie (VVD) until his retirement in 1963. He is also remembered as a prolific writer on parliamentary history and constitutional law. As a PhD-candidate at the University of Groningen I write a biography of Oud in order to improve our understanding of the rise of the modern political mass party in The Netherlands.

Trained as a political scientist and historian at the University of Amsterdam, I am keen to emphasize the political in my historical research. To me, the challenge of writing a biography, is to show Oud’s distinctive features as a politician, and simultaneously demonstrate the relevance of biographical research to a wider community of historians. In practice, this means I opt for a broad definition of what ‘political history’ entails. To contextualize a life, one needs to investigate cultural, economic and social aspects of that person’s surroundings throughout time. Therefore, I engage with a diverse set of sources and questions. For example: what connects a postcard of the cattle market in Oud’s place of birth Purmerend 1886, and an interview with an elderly former colleague of Oud? To construct a storyline out of raw materials such as these in a creative and convincing way is exciting. What I enjoy most about my PhD position then, is the freedom it provides to pursue various types of research.

The OPG/RSPH and its members have been of great help to me. The PhD training program offered tutorials, workshops and seminars that I found very stimulating. The assignments and discussions with all participants prompted me to critically reflect on my own research. On top of that, some events helped to foster a sense of community. In that regard, I’d especially like to mention the 2-day ‘Internationalization’ workshop in Münster and the Writing Retreat in Huissen. I hope the research school will continue to support future PhD-students in a similar vein.

Boris van Haastrecht, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen. The research project ‘Biography of P.J. Oud’ is supervised by prof.dr. G. Voerman (Rijksuniversiteit Groningen), prof.dr. H. te Velde (Universiteit Leiden) and prof.dr. P.T. van de Laar (Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam)