Henk te Velde has been installed as the new President of the APH. At the 6th international PhD conference in Paris, 20-22 June he made a short statement on the future of the Association:
“With the 7th international PhD conference in London (2019) the first round of conferences organized by the APH will be completed. The founding members LUISS (Rome), Bielefeld, Århus, Jyväskylä, Sciences Po (Paris), King’s College (London) and the Research School for Political History (the Netherlands and Flanders), will then all have organized a conference. In 2014 the preparatory conference in Lucca set the tone for the new association, which was subsequently founded in Leiden, later that year. The APH was designed to stimulate international cooperation in the field of political history, and the first priority was PhD students. Beside the annual conferences, PhD students now also organize workshops on their own, and have established a flourishing network.
It seems to be time for the next step: conferences which not only bring together younger and more senior scholars but also take stock of new developments in political history in Europe and beyond, and investigate future avenues for writing political history. This will mean organizing larger conferences – perhaps alternated by smaller PhD conferences – and broadening our membership, but the APH has developed step by step, and we intend to continue along that line, and carefully try out new forms of conferences. Developing in a measured pace, will also allow the continuation of the network function of the APH. Both among PhD students and senior scholars, the forum of the APH has stimulated cooperation in many forms, and we hope that it will continue to do so!”
Henk te Velde is Professor of Dutch History at Leiden University, the Netherlands. He has a wide range of research interests including the history of political eloquence and debate; political culture and legitimacy; and national identity. Recent publications include Democracy in Modern Europe. A conceptual history (Berghahn 2018; ed. with Jussi Kurunmäki and Jeppe Nevers); Organizing Democracy. Reflections on the Rise of Political Organizations in the Nineteenth Century (Palgrave 2017; ed. with Maartje Janse) and Sprekende politiek. Redenaars en hun publiek in de parlementaire gouden eeuw (Prometheus: Amsterdam, 2015). Te Velde is co-editor of the Palgrave Studies in Political History.
