On Friday 30 January 2026, the Erasmus School of History, Culture and Communication will bid farewell to Professor Kees Ribbens.
Kees Ribbens has been an endowed professor in "Popular Historical Culture of Global Conflict and Mass Violence" at the Department of History and the Center for Historical Culture of the ESHCC since 2013. The chair was made possible by NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust & Genocide Studies/KNAW.
Friday 30 january 2026
14:00 – 17:30
Bayle Building(RSM) – JB-50
Campus Woudestein, Erasmus University Rotterdam
Due to the limited number of places available, we would appreciate it if you could let us know whether you will be attending. Please register using the form at the bottom of this page.
Ribbens has taught and researched how memories of war, genocide, and mass violence are represented in popular culture in the 20th and 21st century. As part of his endowed chair, he supervised master's and several doctoral theses, including those within the Research Excellence Initiative research program "War! Popular Culture and European Heritage of Major Armed Conflicts" (principal applicants: Prof. Maria Grever and Prof. Stijn Reijnders) and in collaboration with the History Department of Ghent University. Ribbens has also conducted extensive research on the representation of genocide through comics.
Kees Ribbens will be returning to his full-time position as a Senior Researcher at the NIOD for the fore seeable future.
To mark Kees Ribbens' farewell, the ESHCC is organizing with the NIOD the symposium "Endless Battlefields: A Closer Look at Popular Historical Culture."
The symposium is in Dutch.
Programme
14:00 Doors open
14:30 Dr Pieter Van den Heede (EUR), Opening and welcome
14:45 Dr Susan Hogervorst (OU), Stronger through battlefields - Perception, image formation and the role of eyewitnesses in the popular historical culture of Rotterdam
15:15-15:45 Questions and discussion - Moderator Pieter Van den Heede
Short break
16:00 Prof. Martijn Eickhoff (NIOD)
16:10 Emeritus Prof. Maria Grever (EUR / NL-Lab)
16:20 Prof. Kees Ribbens (EUR / NIOD)
Closing
16:30 Reception