Prof. dr. Kees Ribbens
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Biography
Kees Ribbens is a senior researcher at NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, where he has worked since 2006. He is also an endowed professor of 'Popular historical culture of Global Conflicts and Mass Violence' at Erasmus University Rotterdam. His interest is in how memories of war, genocide and mass violence in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries are represented in words and images. More generally, he looks at how individuals, groups and societies relate to these histories. He is fascinated by the ways in which the Second World War is given meaning, represented and appropriated, each time anew, across various communities.
Ribbens studied history at Radboud University and obtained his PhD at Utrecht University, and was editorial secretary of the Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis. His interest in public history leads him to be interested not only in commemorations, museums and history education, but even more so in popular imagery that, for changing target groups, is constantly transmitting new interpretations – within national and transnational frameworks – of historical war experiences. Studying this phenomenon, in tourism and games among other expressions, but especially in comics and graphic novels, reveals a diverse range of contemporary meanings of memory.
Ribbens publishes regularly and wrote, among other things, 'Exhibiting the War. The Future of World WAR II Museums in the Netherlands' (with Esther Captain), 'Oorlog op vijf continenten. Nieuwe Nederlanders & de geschiedenissen van de Tweede Wereldoorlog' ('War on Five Continents. The New Dutch & the Histories of the Second World War'). (with Joep Schenk and Martijn Eickhoff), ''Zullen wij nog terugkeeren…..' De jodenvervolging in Amersfoort tijdens de Tweede Wereldoorlog' ('Will We Ever Return.....′ The persecution of Jews in Amersfoort during the Second World War') and 'Bewogen jaren. Zwolle in de Tweede Wereldoorlog' ('Eventful Years. Zwolle in the Second World War').