Research programme

Colonial and Global History

Colonial and Global History combines a deep curiosity of transcultural processes such as imperialism, (de)colonization, and globalization with critical historical research on regional societies in Africa, Asia, and the Americas.

Contact: Bart Verheijen

Our approach is profoundly empirical and includes the study of diverse primary sources – textual, visual, oral, material, and environmental. Our aim is to examine and understand the interactions between the ‘global’ and the ‘local’ and vice versa in the period between 1450 and 2000. We work in close partnership with various institutions in the Global South: together we hope to produce fresh historical and societal knowledge and generate a more inclusive understanding of the postcolonial present. Exploring the circulation of people, commodities, values, and ideas, and their significance in the foundations of modernity, we scrutinize how transcontinental and transoceanic connections were established, and why violent conflicts ensued that still affect the world we inhabit today.

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