The Limburg Centre for Social History in 2012
Director:
Prof. Ad Knotter
Centre profile
The Limburg Centre for Social History (SHCL), founded in 1949, is an independent research facility connected to FASoS. It provides a research infrastructure for comparative regional history by giving access to historical sources, maintaining a library collection, developing research and publishing a yearbook and a dissertation series. Its director, Professor Ad Knotter, holds a chair of comparative regional history at FASoS and its head of research, Dr Willibrord Rutten, is on its staff (both are employed by SHCL). The SHCL does research in the fields of historical border studies and the comparative history of mining and mining regions. These fields are important in understanding the history of the cross-border region around Maastricht (today’s Meuse-Rhine Euregion) and of modern Europe in general. The comparative approach enables the SHCL to connect with research institutes and universities elsewhere in Europe. There are many links with research and researchers at FASoS, both in the Politics and Culture in Europe and Arts, Media and Culture research programmes. The SHCL programme thus adds to the faculty’s European profile and contributes to UM’s recently defined profile area, ‘Europe and a Globalising World’.
At the crossroad of its academic and public functions, SHCL fellows publish articles in national and international refereed journals and professional publications (mostly for a regional audience) and the results of commissioned research. As an institute for regional history, SHCL participates fully in writing the history of the Province of Limburg. Its research is disseminated by SHCL publications, especially the SHCL yearbook (Studies voor de social-economische geschiedenis van Limburg) and a dissertation series on regional history (Maaslandse Monografieën). SHCL fellows also publish in journals and books about regional history for a general public; we organise symposia and courses in this field. SHCL is also involved in the preparation of a new scientific history of Limburg that will be part of the 150th anniversary of the regional history society LGOG in 2013. SHCL fellows supervise several trainees (buitenpromovendi) and other students in the field of regional history and cultural heritage. SHCL contributes to teaching at FASoS, in the fields of general and regional history and heritage studies; it also offers traineeships for FASoS students in Arts and Culture (three each year).
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