About

Welcome to the website of Gerben Zaagsma. I am an Assistant Professor in Contemporary and Digital History at the Centre for Contemporary and Digital History (C²DH) of the University of Luxemburg, with main research and teaching interests in modern Jewish, digital, public, and music history.

Before joining C²DH in 2017, I worked in a number of different places and settings. Following my study of history at the University of Groningen, I first worked as a researcher at the Public History Research and Consultancy Center of the same university and a local synagogue foundation. I then studied Yiddish at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, before embarking upon my PhD research project at the European University Institute (EUI) in Florence. I subsequently did a postdoc at the Department of Hebrew and Jewish Studies, University College London and worked as an editor, web developer & researcher at the Huygens Institute for the History of the Netherlands at the Duch Academy of Arts and Sciences. Between 2013-2017, I was a research fellow in the project The diaries of Anne Frank. Research—Translations— Critical Edition at the Lichtenberg Kolleg, the Institute of Advanced Study at the University of Göttingen.

I joined the C²DH in August 2017 and was Head of the Research Area Digital History & Historiography until December 2020, when it merged with the center’s DHARPA team. On behalf of C²DH I also serve on the University of Luxembourg’s Ethics Review Panel (ERP), which I also chaired between 2022-2022.

My current research focuses on the history of digital history. You can also check my full CV, talks and list of publications. Several recent papers and lectures can also be found on Zenodo.


Latest updates:

  • A new short article ‘Between Online and Offline: Doing Archival Research in the Digital Age’ has been published in a special issue of the German archival journal ARCHIV. theorie & praxis on Originalerhalt und Digitalisierung. PDF.
  • I am delighted to give a keynote lecture at Digital History Switzerland 2024 in September 2024.
  • A lengthy new article, Facing the History Machine: Towards Histories of Digital History has been conditionally accepted for publication in History of Humanities, pending revisions.






Image: Le Chat by Philippe Geluck.