Introducing: Henrike Vellinga
Henrike Vellinga recently joined the Institute for History as a PhD candidate, as part of Carolien Stolte's VIDI project 'Peace Palms. International Coalitions for Peace in the Era of Decolonization, 1918-1970'. The project runs alongside Carolien Stolte's ERC project 'Reconciling Peace: International Coalitions for Peace in the Era of Decolonization, 1918-1970'. Henrike works together with Kamila Smagulova, Pratika Dewi and Floris de Ruiter. Below she introduces herself.
Since early September, I have been a very happy member of dr. Carolien Stolte’s project on the history of peace movements and decolonisation.
I am not exactly new to Leiden, or indeed the Institute for History. I moved to Leiden in 2016 to pursue a bachelor’s degree in history. Coming from Groningen, the city waar niets boven gaat to quote with a fitting but very hard to translate slogan, it was not necessarily an obvious choice to settle in Leiden. My prime reason to choose Leiden was the fact that it is the Netherlands’ oldest still operating university. And what place best to study history?
It appears I made the right choice eight years ago, because I never really left. After finishing my bachelor’s degree, I stayed in Leiden for the research master Politics, Culture and National Identities. Sadly, a large part of that programme was moved online due to the pandemic. I decided that I wanted to experience a bit more academic training in person and to travel around, after sitting at home for what seemed like eternity. Luckily, I was admitted to the Europaeum Programme, which offered a one-year master’s programme in European history divided between Leiden, Paris and Oxford. Getting to experience the academic cultures of France and Britain, together with a close cohort of students was most definitely the best part of my studies. Living in the centre of Paris first and then in Balliol College in Oxford was a unique experience. In Oxford, I even got the chance to row for my college’s women’s first boat during the legendary Eights regatta.
During my studies I have developed a keen interest in colonial history, as well as the history of social movements. However, within these broad frameworks I have researched wildly different topics. I moved from the history of the election campaigns of Dutch Communist Party and its Indonesian parliamentary candidates, to the history of poison research in the Dutch East Indies. Outside of my studies, I have worked as a researcher for the Globalise project at the Huygens Institute. Here I gained experience working with the archives of the Dutch East India Company. It also sparked my interest in digital history: from databases to large language models for historical research.
I finally graduated in 2023, with a thesis on the link between radical pacifism and anticolonialism in the interwar period. It is amazing to be able to continue this research for a PhD, although with a bit of a different focus. The next years I will work on African peace activism before the Second World War. I am looking forward to continue broadening my horizons in Leiden, not as a student anymore but as a member of staff.