Peer Vries - Curriculum vitae#

Peer Vries was born October 7, 1953 in Weert in Limburg (the Netherlands), where he visited primary school and then what in the Netherlands is called ‘gymnasium’ or ‘grammar school’. He studied history at the University of Leiden, where he specialised in economic and social history with philosophy of science and sociology as, what we would now call, my ‘minors’. He graduated cum laude in 1979.

After graduation Peer Vries got a job at the Department of History in Leiden. Until 1997 that job consisted only and fully of teaching. He taught a very broad range of topics at all levels of the curriculum in the ‘bachelor programme’ as well as in the ‘master programme’: economic and social history, methodology of historical research, historiography, philosophy of history, history of the early modern world, history of twentieth-century Spain and global history, always with a clear focus on economic and social aspects. Peer Vries has always liked to be interdisciplinary. He has taught, for example, an introduction into economics for historians, economic and social history for sociologists, modern history for political scientists and an introduction into history for art historians, he has extensive experience with teaching and evaluating PhD. students, not only in his work for the Posthumus Institute and for ESTER, but also in many courses for other research schools in which he has participated.

The Posthumus Institute is a research school in which all those engaged in economic and social history at academic institutions in the Netherlands and Belgium participate. ESTER stands for European graduate School for Training in Economic and social-historical Research. In the ESTER Network some 50 European universities participate. Peer Vries helped to co-ordinate and participated in so-called Research Design Courses of this School in Amsterdam, Barcelona, Bari, Brescia, Budapest, Evora, Gent, Munster, Nijmegen, Paris and Tampere.

Contact: Institute for Economic and Social History, University of Vienna, Dr. Karl Lueger Ring 1, A-1010 Wien; Tel. ++43 1 4277 - 41310, Fax ++43 1 4277 - 9413

Current academic functions and distinctions, outside Vienna

• member of the Academia Europaea and member of the Steering Committee of the Section Archaeology & History of that academy.
• member of the team that organizes and gives the Research Design Courses of the European graduate School for Training in Economic and social-historical Research. (ESTER).
• guest-professor of economic history, for a period of five years, beginning winter 2005, at the Nankai University School of Economics in Tianjin China.
• member of the steering committee of the Karl-Lamprecht-Gesellschaft / ENIUGH, European Network In Universal and Global History.
• editor of the Journal of Global History, published by the Cambridge University Press and the London School of Economics and Political Science. I do the editing together with Professor William G. Clarence-Smith (School of Oriental and African Studies at London) and Professor Kenneth Pomeranz (University of California, Irvine).
• editor of The Library of Economic History, a peer-reviewed book series that publishes monographs and edited volumes on international aspects of economic history and case studies of an exemplary nature for the international scholarly debate. The series is published by Brill Leiden. I do this together with Dr Regina Grafe.
• member of the Editorial Board of the Global Economic History Series that is published by Brill Leiden.
• member of the Editorial Board of Comparativ. Zeitschrift für Globalgeschichte und Vergleichende Gesellschaftsforschung, published on behalf of the Karl-Lamprecht-Gesellschaft and the European Network In Universal and Global History.
• Chairman of the International Board of Advisers of the Freiburg Institute for Advanced Study, Section Modern History.
• Member of the European Research Council Advanced Grant Evaluation Panel SH6: the study of the human past.

Reviews:

NWO (The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research); FWO (Research Foundation – Flanders); Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences; Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies; European Research Council; The Economic and Social Research Council of the UK; Leverhulme Trust, Cambridge University Press; Brill Publishers; Tijdschrift voor Sociale en Economische Geschiedenis and of course the University of Vienna.

Activities:

• member of the Editorial Board of Europäische Geschichte Online, a project of the Institut für Europäische Geschichte der Universität Mainz und das Kompetenzzentrum für elektronische Erschließungs- und Publikationsverfahren in den Geisteswissenschaften der Universität Trier

• member and convenor of the Global Economic History Network (GEHN), a three-year programme funded by a Leverhulme Trust Grant, titled: “A Millennium of Material Progress”. I ran this network together with Professor Patrick O’Brien, London School of Economics and Political Science, Professor Kenneth Pomeranz, University of California at Irvine, and Professor Kaoru Sugihara, University of Osaka Japan. At the moment we are looking for new funding.
• chair of the teaching committee and co-ordinator of the teaching programme of the Dutch research School N.W. Posthumus for economic and social history.
• visiting academic fellow for the first term of the academic year 2004-2005 at the Department of Economic History at the London School of Economics and Political Science.
• associate editor of the Encyclopaedia of World History, published by Berkshire Publishing Group Ll.C in 2005.
• L.J. Rogier professor of comparative world history at the University of Nijmegen, for the period of September 2001 till September 2004.
• editor of Itinerario. European Journal of Overseas History 1999-2002. The journal is now, more appropriately, called, Itinerario. International Journal on the history of European Expansion and Global Interaction.
• fellow at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the humanities and social sciences, during the academic year 2001-2002.
• editor of Leidschrift, a historical journal published at the Department of History, Leiden University, for the period 1985-1995.

Lecturing

From the year 2000 onwards I been personally invited to give lectures at Universities and Institutes in: Belgium (Brussels 3x, Gent and Leuven) Germany (Berlin 2x, Bonn, Cologne, Dresden 3x, Freiburg, Hamburg, Heidelberg 2x, Konstanz and Leipzig); Switzerland (Geneva); France (Aix en Provence, Paris 2x); Britain (London 6x); Norway (Christiansand 7x and Oslo 3x); Austria, before my professorship here, Vienna, 2x; Hungary (Budapest); Spain (Madrid); Italy (Villa Vigoni, Loveno di Menaggio, 5x); Russia (Moscow and Saint Petersburg); Greece (Athens, Rethymon Crete); United States (Boston, Durham 2x, Irvine, Portland, Spokane, Salt Lake City, Washington); Canada (Vancouver) and China (Tianjin 4x, a couple of lectures each time, and Beijing 2x); the Netherlands since my professorship in Vienna: Groningen, The Hague, Leiden, 8 different lectures plus a master-class; Utrecht.