Pieter van Rees

Profile

Since 2022, I have been a lecturer in Citizenship and Education at the University of Humanistic Studies. Prior to that, I was a lecturer in Philosophy of Public Health and Medical Ethics at Maastricht University. After studying Philosophy and History at the University of Groningen (specializing in Political and Continental Philosophy, with a thesis on Nietzsche and Romanticism), I conducted doctoral research in the Department of Education at the University of Groningen on the history of democratic citizenship education in the Netherlands and the United States since 1920. During my master’s program, I studied for half a year at the Sorbonne (Paris), and during my doctoral studies, I spent half a year conducting research as a Fulbright scholar at Teachers College, Columbia University (New York). 

My research focuses on the history of education and democracy. During my doctoral studies, I investigated the development of various academic and political theories on democratic citizenship education and how those perspectives were reflected in social studies textbooks in the Netherlands and the U.S. Through archival research and qualitative analyses of textbooks, policy documents, and academic publications, I examined how “democratic citizenship” was shaped as an educational goal in these two countries during the 20th and 21st centuries. In my follow-up research, I am focusing on the history of political education within social movements. Based on this research, I aim to enrich the contemporary debate on citizenship education with historical depth and perspective.