Quite often, my friends and family ask me: ok, you work at the university, but what do you actually do there? Well, except for teaching the history of western political thought, I do research. In case you are curious what that means in practice, have a look at this recent interview that the Nijmegen School of…

It’s been a while since I updated this site. I’ve been very busy with writing, doing research, teaching, and happily fulfilling my duties as a young father. Unfortunately, updating this website was at the very bottom of my Что Делать-list. But here’s some good news: even some liberals in the Netherlands are beginning to show…

Today is the Day of German Unity, the day on which the Germans celebrate that 26 years ago, their country was reunited. It is the only holiday that is organised by federal law, and luckily for the Germans this means that everyone has a day off. Unfortunately enough, I wasn’t aware of this. This morning,…

Today, I started my archival research in Germany. The upcoming weeks, I’ll stay in Berlin and study source material in the Bundesarchiv. I was very pleasantly surprised with the beautiful suburb of Lichterfelde in which the archive is situated.   The archive itself is located in former barracks of the Prussian Kadettenkorps, that was disbanded as…

Last week, the second volume of the Bighton based journal Critical Studies was published. In this volume, one can find my review of the book Futures of Democracy. The book is edited by Bas Leijssenaar, Evert van der Zweerde and Judith Martens, who aim to discuss the topic of democracy in a democratic fashion. In my review of the book I argue…

Voor een Nederlandse versie, klik hier! Last week, I was in Copenhagen for a seminar titled Alternatives to parliamentary democracy. It was organised by Jesper, one of the PhD researchers I met last year at the summer school in conceptual history. The aim of the seminar was to discuss among young scholars historical language and…

This week, I have been working on the final adjustments of a review of the book Futures of Democracy, that will hopefully be published in the next issue of Critical Studies. The most fascinating aspect about the book, is that the editors – Bas Leijssenaar, Evert van der Zweerde and Judith Martens – have tried to match…