From September 2021 until February 2022, Maarten Zwiers will be a visiting fellow at the RIAS.
Maarten Zwiers is assistant professor of Contemporary History and American Studies at the University of Groningen. In February 2021 he started a three-year research project titled Race Land: The Ecology of Segregation, funded by the European Research Council with a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship. Race Land investigates the global and environmental impact of Jim Crow segregation during the Cold War era, especially the entanglement of segregationist politics with environmentally harmful business practices such as the development and application of pesticides, oil drilling, and large-scale agriculture. More information about the project can be found here: https://racelandproject.com.
Three host institutions participate in the project: the University of Groningen, the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi, and RIAS. Because of the pandemic Maarten could not travel to the States, as originally planned. Instead, he has been working from home during the spring and summer of 2021 and moved his secondment at RIAS from the spring of 2023 to the fall of 2021. Hopefully he can begin with the US part of his fellowship in early 2022.
At RIAS, Maarten Zwiers will be doing research and finish two articles related to Race Land. In addition, he will be involved in RIAS activities, such as PhD seminars, (online) classes for high school and university students, lectures, and symposia. If you want to learn more about his work, check his profile page at the RUG: https://www.rug.nl/staff/m.zwiers/.