The RIAS is now accepting submissions for this year’s annual Theodore Roosevelt American History Award (TRAHA) for the best MA thesis on American history defended at a Dutch university in 2020.
The Netherlands American Studies Review is the student journal of the Netherlands American Studies Association (NASA). Two RIAS PhD candidates, Debby Esmeé de Vlugt and Celia Nijdam, are part of the Editorial Committee of this review. The Committee is looking for papers for their Spring 2021 edition.
The RIAS is pleased to offer a “Sustainable Freedoms Essay Prize” to a UCR student for the best essay on an issue that connects environmental issues to human rights. The essay may consist of a Senior Research Project or a term paper written for a specific UCR course.
On Thursday 21 January 2021, a day after Joe Biden's inauguration as President of the United States, the RIAS hosted the first Roosevelt lecture of 2021: "The Democratic Party and the US South: Past, Present, and Future."
A joint production of the Roosevelt Foundation, University College Roosevelt, and the RIAS, "Vier Vrijheden in de Klas" will be officially presented on 6 January 2021.
On Friday, 18 December 2020, starting at 4:00 pm, the RIAS will host an online lecture on the future of energy and climate policies in the US after the election of Joe Biden. The lecture will be given by Dr. Gaetano Di Tommaso, researcher at SciencePo-Paris and an expert on US environmental and energy security policy.
Together with its fellow Middelburg-based organizations, University College Roosevelt and the HZ University of Applied Sciences, the RIAS organized an online election event on the night of 3 November 2020.
On 10 and 11 December 2020, the RIAS hosted the online conference on "Racial Democracy: Challenges to Civic Democratic Ideals in American History." The conference is co-sponsored by Leiden University and the NWO VIDI Project "Beacons of Freedom."
The RIAS is a proud participant in the Campus Zeeland initiative: a collaboration between Zeeland institutions of research and higher education, in partnership with local business and government.
As of 4 November 2020 the RIAS Library will be closed again for a least two weeks, in compliance with Dutch government measures to contain the spread of COVID-19.
On Friday 30 October 2020 at 4 p.m. Liam Kennedy, Professor of American Studies and Director of the Clinton Institute for American Studies at University College Dublin, will give prior to the US presidential elections on 3 November 2020 an online lecture on "Trump's America."
On Monday 5 October 2020 the US Ambassador, Peter Hoekstra, visited the RIAS as part of a film tour of Dutch locations of major significance to US-Netherlands relations.
The official reopening of the RIAS takes place on Friday 2 October 2020. Former colleague Hans Krabbendam gives a presentation on his new book Saving the Overlooked Continent: American Protestant Missions in Western Europe 1940-1975.
The Roosevelt Institute for American Studies is pleased to offer 3 full PhD scholarships, situated within the project “Racial Democracy: Challenges to Civil Democratic Ideals in American History.”
The RIAS has decided to postpone the Spring Roosevelt Lecture on "The Forgotten Bombardment" with the showing of the film "Days of May" on 22 April 2020 due to the recent, severe COVID-19 circumstances. A new date will be announced as soon as possible.
The RIAS is pleased to announce that it will host the 26th annual Amerikanistendag on Friday, 29 May 2020. The Amerikanistendag is a student conference organized by the Netherlands American Studies Association (NASA), and serves as a forum for students and recent graduates at the BA, (Res)MA, and PhD level to present their research to fellow students and scholars in the Netherlands.
The RIAS has decided to postpone the conference “Racial Democracy: Challenges to Civic Democratic Ideals in American History” on 7 and 8 May 2020 due to the recent, severe COVID-19 circumstances. We hope to host this conference in July or December 2020. As soon as the new dates are settled, we will post it on our website.
Interested in an internship and do you want to acquire experience in an academic institute? The RIAS has an internship available from 1 October-31 December 2020.
In 2019 the RIAS launched a short-term research fellowship. This program is meant to enable early career scholars and young researchers to spend a period of research in Middelburg. The fellowship’s main goal is to help with the preparation of grant proposals, the finalization of peer-reviewed articles, and the fine-tuning of PhD dissertations.
In 2019 the RIAS launched a short-term research fellowship. This program is meant to enable early career scholars and young researchers to spend a period of research in Middelburg. The fellowship’s main goal is to help with the preparation of grant proposals, the finalization of peer-reviewed articles, and the fine-tuning of PhD dissertations.
The NASA Amerikanistendag, that would have taken place at the RIAS on 29 May 2020, will have to be postponed. A new date will be announced in due time.
On 24 October 2019 Professor James J. Kimble of Seton Hall University (South Orange, New Jersey) gave an entertaining public lecture about Norman Rockwell’s visual promotion of the Four Freedoms in the 1940s, entitled "Roosevelt, Rockwell, and the War of Ideals: The Struggle for the Four Freedoms in History and Memory."
This summer the winner of the Theodore Roosevelt American History Awards 2019, Queeny van der Spek, spent a week in North Dakota, where she was hosted by the Theodore Roosevelt Medora Foundation and the Theodore Roosevelt Center at Dickinson State University.
On 10-11 October 2019 the RIAS held the conference "Futures of Food" together with Food Delta Zeeland and the HZ University of Applied Sciences (Vlissingen).
In the mid 1990s the Roosevelt Institute (RI) in New York established the Roosevelt Foundation for the Study of the United States at Moscow State University (MSU).
On Thursday 24 October 2019, Professor James Kimble presented the Fall Roosevelt Lecture on "Roosevelt, Rockwell, and the War of Ideals: The Struggle for the Four Freedoms in History and Memory" at the RIAS.
The Marilyn B. Young Grant 2019 has been awarded to Michelle Carmody from the School of Social and Political Sciences of the University of Melbourne (Australia) for her research project "Amnesty International and the Challenge of Human Rights in US Foreign Policy."
On Tuesday 4 and Wednesday 5 June 2019 the RIAS hosted a two-day research seminar, involving the Institute’s PhD candidates alongside the research group of the “Cities of Refuge” project led by Barbara Oomen.
On 27 May 2019 our postdoctoral researcher, Dr. Cees Heere, joined a roundtable discussion on "The EU Elections: Populism, Nationalism, and the 'New Europe.'"
Ilia Lakstygal, a history PhD student at Moscow State University, visited the RIAS in May 2019 as the first participant in a new New York-Moscow-Middelburg research cooperation agreement.
The RIAS provides three-month internships to Dutch BA/MA students with an interest in the United States. Over the years, our growing network of alumni has gone on to use their experience at the RIAS as a stepping-stone for a wide variety of further careers.
On Tuesday 2 April 2019, the US Ambassador to Netherlands Peter Hoekstra delivered the Spring Roosevelt Lecture on "The U.S. and the Netherlands: Building on 400 Years."
As of 1 January 2019 the academic director of the RIAS Giles Scott-Smith has been appointed as Roosevelt Chair in New Diplomatic History at Leiden University.
The RIAS has extended its primary sources on Jimmy Carter with the acquisition of a 46-reel microfilm collection on foreign policy during his presidency.
The RIAS welcomes our new PhD student Debby Esmeé de Vlugt. After completing her BA at University College Roosevelt and her master's degree at University of Oxford, she now returns to Middelburg for her PhD.
On 10 December 2018 the RIAS organized a roundtable at the Middelburg bookshop De Drvkkery, to celebrate the 70th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
The keynote lectures of the symposium "Seeking Refuge: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on Refugees and Asylum" (27-28 September 2018) are now available to listen online.
The RIAS, in cooperation with the University of Strasbourg, organizes a one day conference on American communities abroad and their broader socio-economic, cultural, environmental and political impact.
Places are still available for the keynote lecture by Udo Janz, former director of UNHCR New York, who will close the public symposium on Refugees and Asylum on 28 September 2018
The RIAS will host a public symposium “Seeking Refuge: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on Refugees and Asylum,” on 27-28 September 2018. Keynote speakers are Udo Janz (former director of UNHCR) and Peter Rose (Smith College, USA).
This year's Theodore Roosevelt American History Award was awarded to Megan Griffiths (Leiden) for her thesis on the Salem witchcraft 'crisis' of the 1690s.
From 2-4 May 2018, the Director of Oxford University’s Rothermere American Institute, Halbert Jones, visited the RIAS. During his visit, it was agreed that the two American Studies institutions would deepen their cooperation by facilitating the exchange of short-term visits between Oxford and Middelburg.
On Wednesday 16 May 2018 at 4:30 pm the RIAS and the Roosevelt Foundation will host Karen Armstrong for a special Roosevelt Lecture to accompany the 2018 Four Freedoms Awards.
On Friday 25 May 2018 Professor Damian Pargas, executive director of the RIAS, will deliver his inaugural address at Leiden University, entitled 'Promised Lands: Seeking Freedom in the Age of American Slavery.'
On Monday 16 April 2018 the RIAS and University College Roosevelt hosted the American Professor Emeritus Peter Rose from Smith College. Professor Rose delivered the Spring Roosevelt Lecture on 'The Stranger at the Gate: The Politics and Morality of US Immigration and Refugee Policy from FDR to Trump.'
On Friday 16 March 2018 two policy officers from the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs will present their views on 'Transatlantic Cooperation 2.0' at the first Transatlantic Lecture of 2018.
'Bridging Divides,' the 3rd Conference of the New Diplomatic History Network, was held at the RIAS from 24 through 26 October 2018. Keynote speakers were Naoko Shimazu (Yale-NUS College Singapore) and John Watkins (University of Minnesota).
The RIAS staff is pleased to announce the 2018 Marilyn B. Young Research Grant, a a new program to support research on the history of US foreign policy and especially its overlap with social and civil rights history. The grant will be offered to scholars who are interested in using the RIAS holdings and collections to further their research.
On Wednesday, 4 October 2017, Professor Justin Hart (Texas Tech University), visiting professor at the RIAS, delivered the latest installment of the Roosevelt Lectures. The lecture is now available online.
The RIAS welcomes it latest staff member: Professor Damian Pargas. Professor Pargas serves as the Institute's Executive Director and holds the Raymond and Beverly Sackler Chair of History and Culture of the United States and the Americas at Leiden University.
To mark the launch of the Roosevelt Institute for American Studies, the institute will host a major international conference in November 2017, dedicated to exploring the ‘Rooseveltian Century’ as a historical theme and an interpretative framework.
On 24 May 2017 the RIAS, together with local partners (Middelburg City Council, Roosevelt Foundation, and University College Roosevelt), held an international policy workshop on the subject of LGBTQ Elderly Care.
