Liesbeth Van De Grift

Biography

Liesbeth van de Grift is Assistant Professor in the History of International Relations. She is also co-director of the Utrecht Centre for International Studies, which recently became part of the newly established Utrecht Centre for Global Challenges, and involved in the interdisciplinary research program Institutions for Open Societies. This year she was a Visiting Fellow at the European University Institute in Florence. Her main research interests include the history of state planning, rural development and sustainability, and environmental politics with a focus on the changing relationship between governing authorities, non-state organizations, experts and citizens at various levels of governance. In her VENI-research project, funded by the Dutch Organization for Scientific Research (NWO), Van de Grift studied discourses and practices of internal colonization in interwar Europe, which were underpinned by quests for food security, social improvement, national grandeur, and the modernization of agricultural production and rural societies. She has published about her research in several international journals, such as Contemporary European History and Agricultural History. 2017 will see the publication of Governing the Rural in Interwar Europe (Routledge), a volume co-edited with Amalia Ribi Forclaz, which addresses interwar endeavors to reform and modernize rural societies and livelihoods.

Research Interest

history