Dr F. Meijer (Fons)

Fons Meijer is writing a PhD thesis on the subject of disasters in the Netherlands in the 19th century. While much of the historical disaster scholarship socioeconomically researches the vulnerability and resilience of societies, Meijer (like his colleagues at the NWO-Vici project Dealing with Disasters in the Netherlands) aims at looking at the history of disasters from the perspective of cultural history. He investigates how the image of disasters was regulated in various media and specifically looks at the relation between moments of disaster and identity formation. How did communities in the Netherlands respond to disasters, how were disasters interpreted, and did they lead to feelings of local, regional, and/or national solidarity?

Meijer completed the Research Master Historical Studies at Radboud University in 2017, during which he focused on 19th and 20th century political and social history of Western Europe, with a special interest for the historical development of ideas and practices of political representation. He wrote his thesis about the appropriation of opinion research by public broadcasters and how this has influenced notions of democratic legitimacy. Between September 2016 and February 2017, he studied at The University of Sheffield as a part of the Erasmus+ Programme.