On the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the Stichting 1940-1945 (Foundation 1940-1945), the Foundation has established a special chair in collaboration with Utrecht University. Entitled Stichting 1940-1945: geschiedenis en betekenis van verzet tegen onderdrukking en vervolging(Foundation 1940-1945: history and meaning of resistance against oppression and prosecution), the chair will be part of the Department of History and Art History at Utrecht University. The chair will be held by Dr. Ismee Tames (1976), who will also continue to work as research director of the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies.

Stichting 1940-1945

Stichting 1940-1945 (Dutch) was established during the Second World War, when representatives of several resistance groups took the initiative to support disabled resistance participants and the families of deceased resistance participants and to continue supporting them after the liberation. The aim of the new chair is to keep the memory alive of both resistance, prosecution and violence against citizens during the war years 1940-1945, and of the way in which the Foundation has realised its particular form of solidarity.

Ismee Tames

Ismee Tames (1976) is director of research at the NIOD, Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. After studying History and Political Sciences she worked as a (senior) researcher at Nyfer, Forum for Economic Research, where she specialized in urban economics and issues of social cohesion. From 2002 until 2005 she worked at the Amsterdam University Institute for German Studies (DIA) where she received her PhD “War on our minds: War, Neutrality and Identity in Dutch public debate during the First World War” (published in Dutch 2006).

In 2006 she became postdoc researcher at the NIOD and worked on various projects . In these research programs stood most of the time the experience and the long-term effect of war central. This resulted for example in two studies: Besmette Jeugd (2009) and Doorn in het vlees(2013).

Tames' fields of interest are the consequences of war and occupation for societies, the experience of war, processes of inclusion and exclusion, behavior and choices of people in times of war, and emotions and behavior at the intersection of peace and war.