Testimonials

"The programme is challenging and you are expected a high degree of independent research and work. The courses in the first year are centred around the different building blocks and fundamental skills you need when conducting historical research. However, you are allowed a lot of freedom in the topics you pursue within these courses.

During my second year I interned at a consultancy and research company in The Hague. This internship allowed me to really apply my knowledge and skills as an historian to practical cases and research. Although this was not a typical internship for a history Master's programme, I found that many of the skills I had acquired during the rMA really helped me in my internship.

As a historian you learn to quickly process large quantities of information, detect patterns, and then distil this into a comprehensible story. This is an incredibly valuable skill in any job. The internship allowed me to realize that I like to apply the research skills the rMA has taught me to current issues and practical cases. Past and present constantly interact. Recognizing such patterns and connections is one of the most valuable competences the rMA has brought me."

"An example is a research seminar I followed with a fellow student on Greenpeace International. At the end of the seminar our mentor Liesbeth van de Grift encouraged us to write an article on our research. She also invited us to organise a workshop at the international conference on environmental history in Zagreb where we presented our research.

Just when I graduated there was a job opening at the Centre for Parliamentary History at the Radboud University. The research topic perfectly matched my personal interests and I have been working there since. I am part of a research programme that studies the Dutch parliamentary history of the 1970s. My subproject covers the political struggle over financial and socioeconomic policy during 1981 and 1982. In the future, I hope that I can continue to work on interesting projects as a researcher or PhD student."

"After the RMA, I worked as a junior lecturer in the History Department, while I was applying to PhD programmes in the US. The application process is very different from the Netherlands, and since I had studied at UCLA with graduate students who successfully went through this process, I could ask them to look over my application materials. Their advice was incredibly helpful. I would advice all master students to talk to people and ask for advice. Don’t be afraid to ask for feedback on your application materials for any job you’re wanting to apply to. Reach out to people who successfully went through the process, even if you don’t know them.

I ended up applying to universities that seemed to be a good fit with my project. Luckily, my applications were successful and in September 2014 I started my PhD at UCLA’s History Department. Because of the various world-renowned universities and research institutes, Los Angeles is a very stimulating academic place which has allowed me to meet and build connections with scholars from all over the world.

What I love about writing a dissertation is that it requires you to be creative. You have to draw unique and important connections between events, developments, and sources. A lot of in-depth knowledge is required before you can establish what kind of intervention your work will make in your field of research, so it takes a long time and you have to be patient and persevere. The scope of the dissertation (and the subsequent book) is also quite challenging in this respect: instead of developing an argument for a small case study or paper, you have to draw connections between various chapters and argue how it all hangs together. Writing a dissertation is really pushing my creative skills. It is an exciting process."

"During the Research Seminar I participated in Dr Laurien Crump’s project A Common European Home? The Conference for Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) as a Paradigm for Peace, 1973-1993. Together with two fellow students, I critically reconstructed part of the current understanding of the CSCE, such as the historiographical focus on the Western European integration of human rights, and the dominant neglect of efforts made by Eastern European countries.

Although the Research Seminar officially finished, our project was still in progress. My fellow students and I visited the Bundesarchiv in Berlin to further enhance our findings. Under the supervision of Dr Crump we have rewritten our Seminar reports into an academic article, which we intended to publish during the course of the current academic year. Conducting this research outside of the safe university environment was really exiting.

The Research Seminar enabled me to not only apply, but also to enhance the skills I gained previously during my studies. Using analysis of such a large number of primary sources in order to critically tie into a historiographical debate was challenging, but above all very instructive. As an assignment the Seminar is quite different from the average university task, since it not just requires you to answer a research question, but also asks you to constantly reflect on your methodological approach. Designing such a research on your own, while simultaneously being part of a larger project was very intellectually challenging to me, since the contact with my ‘co-researchers’ and our supervisor constantly stimulated me to enhance my individual argumentation."