Maarten Prak - Biography#

Even though Prof. Prak was trained at Utrecht University and worked there all his life, he can be considered an international scholar. From initial work on local social history in the Netherlands he subsequently expanded his scope to work on Dutch national history (a book on the Dutch Golden Age, first published in 2003 in Dutch, subsequently translated into Hungarian, English, and Chinese), and then to comparative history of Europe (edited volumes and special issues in 1995, 1996, 1997, 2000, 2008 (2), another in 2019), and finally global history (edited volume in 2013, monograph in 2018).

He has participated in numerous international workshops and conferences, and organised a dozen himself. He has also been a visiting scholar at some of the most prestigious universities in England, France and Germany on nine different occasions since his appointment as full professor in 1992, including the universities of Exeter and Münster, the Ecole des Hautes Etudes in Paris, the London School of Economics and the University of Cambridge.

Next to his research, he has maintained an active teaching career, and was elected Teacher of the Year at his university in 2014. He has also taken responsibility for academic governance in numerous roles, from research director for his department and faculty to the Humanities Board of the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research NWO, which he chaired 2014 - 2016, and presently as member of the governing board of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences KNAW, and of ALLEA (All European Academies).