Modern and Contemporary History
At the Department of History of Ghent University, there is a long-standing tradition of research into Modern and Contemporary History. Shortly after the Second World War, Jan Dhondt established one of the first Seminars for Contemporary History in the Low Countries, the distant precursor of today’s research group Modern and Contemporary History.
Initially, the work of Ghent-based modern and contemporary historians focused primarily on socio-economic and political history. Today, however, their research covers a far broader spectrum—including ecological history, religious history, and rural history—and is characterized by strong interdisciplinary collaboration. From the outset, historians in Ghent have attached great importance to the societal relevance of their research (see Meta history and public history).
The current research program of the group encompasses five lines of research:
- Collective Action and Social Movements
- Human–Environment Dynamics
- War and Conflict
- History of Religion
- Socio-Economic History
Collective Action and Social Movements
Collective action has long been a central theme within social history, dating back to the rise of innovative historiographical currents such as the British Marxist historians and the Annales School in the 1950s. Within our Ghent research group, too, a lively tradition exists in the study of social movements and forms of societal mobilization.
Our approach is grounded in the broader theoretical framework of contentious politics, which maps the dynamics of conflict between groups, movements, and power structures. We understand collective action not as isolated eruptions, but as an ongoing process of negotiation in which interests, ideologies, and power relations intersect.
Particular attention is paid to the interaction between different scales. We investigate how local protest practices are shaped by global ideological currents, migration networks, or international mechanisms of repression, and, conversely, how micro-practices contribute to shaping global repertoires of action and meaning.
Our definition of collective action is deliberately broad. In addition to classical social movements, we also examine forms of street politics that have often been neglected in historiography: parades, processions, spontaneous tributes, neighbourhood mobilizations, confrontations with police, and other symbolic acts in public space. Our analysis encompasses not only left-wing or progressive movements, but also conservative, nationalist, fascist, ecological, and religious forms of mobilization.
Methodologically, we combine quantitative and qualitative approaches, ranging from discourse analysis and oral history to digital techniques such as network analysis, cartography, and computational text analysis.
Human-Environment Dynamics
The research line Human-Environment Dynamics explores how environmental factors have shaped human societies — their activities, settlement patterns, economies, and conflicts — and how human actions, in turn, have profoundly transformed landscapes, ecosystems, and biodiversity. At its core lies the mutual entanglement of humans and nature, and the question of how both have co-evolved over time.
This research adopts a long-term perspective. Environmental issues such as climate change and ecosystem degradation can only be fully understood by uncovering their historical roots. From this vantage point, the program engages with sustainability studies and future-oriented research, offering insights to inform policy choices and address societal challenges.
Human-Environment Dynamics is inherently transdisciplinary. Historians collaborate with geographers, archaeologists, ecologists, data scientists, and climate researchers, while also involving local communities, policymakers, and citizen scientists. Methodologically, we combine historical analysis with innovative spatial tools such as historical GIS and digital cartography. Through citizen science and public history, we make this knowledge accessible and contribute to building a more sustainable future.
War and Conflict
Wherever people live together, conflict arises. Understanding how conflicts emerge, how they are resolved, and how societies deal with their aftermath constitutes a central set of questions for historians. This is particularly true in the case of wars—large-scale violent conflicts that have exerted a profound impact on societies past and present. Analyzing that impact in all its complexity—political, ideological, cultural, and socio-economic—is a key objective of this research programme. Large-scale violence profoundly disrupts human lives, and the question of how societies cope with such crises is therefore essential. Equally crucial is uncovering the dynamics of violence itself, an issue that, somewhat surprisingly, has often received insufficient attention within the historiography of war.
When the weapons fall silent, further questions arise concerning how societies confront the legacies of large-scale violence. Which memories are cultivated, and which are silenced? Are perpetrators or victims brought before courts of law—or deliberately spared from them?
Smaller-scale conflicts likewise deserve the historian’s attention, for disputes are a fundamental element of human existence even in times of peace. How do individuals or social groups settle their conflicts: do they resolve them privately, or do they appeal to state justice? And how does the state, with its monopoly on violence, respond to such conflicts?
History of religion
At UGent, the history of religion in the modern and contemporary period focuses on conflicts and controversies, the relationality of the secular and religious, as well as minorities and acculturation. The centre of gravity is in Christian-Jewish relations and Protestant-Catholic ones, with particular emphasis on German Judaism and nineteenth-century Central Europe. It also expands beyond the modern period alone to consider entanglements with earlier ones – especially antiquity – and the way those past worlds were constructed, used, and contested in later history.
Our research unites theoretical interest from religious studies with the granular details of specific contexts. The approach is highly qualitative, grounded in published and unpublished materials and special attention to the lives of individuals. The scope extends, too, beyond Europe, following exiles to North America, emigrants to the Middle East, and missionaries to South Asia.
Socioeconomic History
As a line of research within Modern and contemporary history, our work in socioeconomic history aims to better understand and explain the profound processes that have transformed the world over the past 250 years. Our research focuses on long-term changes in everyday life, demography, economic structures, and social relations.
We distinguish ourselves through a combination of empirical rigor and conceptual reflection, with a strong emphasis on social inequality and the dynamics of economic change. Drawing on large-scale data collection from both serial and textual sources, and engaging in dialogue with related social sciences, we offer an innovative perspective on modern and contemporary history.
By studying socioeconomic developments from a historical perspective, we seek to provide insight into the roots of contemporary societal challenges—such as inequality, migration, and economic insecurity—and to contribute to current policy debates and public discourse. Historical thinking, after all, enables a deeper understanding of the complexity of the present.