Peter Vermeersch
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Bio

Peter Vermeersch is a professor of politics at the Faculty of Social Sciences of the KU Leuven. He has an MA in Slavic languages and East European studies (1994), cultural studies (1995) and a PhD in political science (2002). He studied in Leuven and Kraków. As a postdoctoral researcher he worked, among others, at the Center for European Studies, Harvard University. At the Faculty of Social Sciences in Leuven he is a senior member of the research group LINES (Leuven International and European Studies) and teaches at the MA International Politics (MIP). His teaching includes courses on "Questions of Democracy in Central and Eastern Europe," "Nationalism and Political Mobilization," and "Russian Politics in the Global Context."

Contact

KU Leuven, Faculty of Social Sciences, LINES (Leuven International and European Studies).
Parkstraat 45 - box 3602, 3000 Leuven, Belgium.
​Email
His research focuses on minority politics, nationalism, democratization, and restorative justice. His work has appeared in a range of academic journals, and he has published several academic books, among others, The Romani Movement: Minority Politics and Ethnic Mobilization in Contemporary Central Europe (Berghahn Books, 2006) and The EU Enlargement and Gay Politics (Palgrave 2016, co-edited with Koen Slootmaeckers and Heleen Touquet). 

​He also writes essays, poetry, and literary non-fiction, mainly in Dutch. In 2014, he published Ex, Over een land dat zoek is (Ex. About a Country that is Gone, De Bezige Bij), a book of reportage in and about the former Yugoslavia, which was nominated for the AKO Literature Prize, the Bob den Uyl Prize, the Golden Owl, the E. du Perron Prize, and won, in 2016, the Literature Prize of the Province of West Flanders. 

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In 2019, he published Aantekeningen bij een moord (Notes on a Murder, De Bezige Bij), a non-fiction novel that investigates a murder trial in Brussels and raises wider questions about violence, punishment, and the justice system.
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​[NL]

Ongoing and recent research collaborations

Masculinity, vulnerability and victimhood: male victims of conflict-related sexual violence in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia (2018-2022)
Researcher: Heleen Touquet

A Soldier’s Experience for Society’s Peace: Combat Veterans and Post-Conflict Resolution in Southeast Europe​ (2020-2024)
Researcher: Charles Warner (PhD research)

Nationalist populism in the liberal international system: causes, strategies and challenges (2020-2024)
Researcher: Jens Meijen (PhD research)

Neo-Ottomanism? New strategies of Turkey and the impact of foreign aid to post-war cultural reconstruction in the Balkans (2018-2021)
Researcher: Ana Devic (Marie Curie Fellowship)

Invisible edges of citizenship: re-addressing the position of Romani minorities in Europe (2017-2019)
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Researcher: Julija Sardelic (Marie Curie Fellowship)


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Supervised PhD dissertations

Recovering truth, transforming conflict: an exploration of ways in which truth recovery can contribute to conflict transformation in conditions where the prospect for justice for grave violations is problematical (2020)
James Peter Tyrone Savage

The Green Challenge: Exploring Explanations of Russia's Renewable Energy Policies (2018)
Researcher: Niels Smeets

Signaling values: Europeanisation and Memory Politics in Croatia and Serbia (2019)
Ana Milosevic

Unnation (2016)
Ivan Grubanov

Turkey entangled with Europe? A qualitative exploration of mobility and citizenship accounts of highly educated migrants from Turkey (2013)
​Zeynep Yanasmayan

Escaping ethnopolis: postethnic mobilization in Bosnia-Herzegovina (2012)
Heleen Touquet
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