On Friday, March 15, 2024, VGN, the Association of History Teachers in the Netherlands and the History Department of the Erasmus School of History, Culture & Communication (EUR), will host the 8th National History Education Congress. This congress will focus on the theme “War and Europe: Conflict and Peace in History Education”.
With the war in Ukraine and the developments in the Middle East, the theme of ‘war’ is unfortunately very topical again. It invites us to reflect on how war and conflict are taught in history education, or how they should be taught. In education, wars are crucial moments of discontinuity, which can provide an explanation for many political and social developments. However, students’ interest often focuses on the conflict itself. It is therefore a question of how we can teach the broader meaning and impact of wars, but also what the role is of peace processes and structural and incidental attempts to maintain peace.
At the conference, these questions will be addressed in lectures and workshops. The role of violence will be looked at and war in Dutch history, the problem of teaching recent conflicts, the possibilities and limits of history education as a means for peace and reconciliation, and the didactic challenges of working with sources and stories about war and conflict.
You are cordially invited to participate in this conference! The conference will take place on Friday, March 15 at Huis Doorn and Koningshof Doorn in Doorn. The conference is in the Dutch language.