Willemijn Ruberg is associate professor in Cultural History (with ius promovendi) and Head of the Cultural History group. Her research interests include the modern history of gender, sexuality, emotions, law, knowledge, forensic expertise and the body, as well as cultural theory. She published History of the Body (2020) in the History and Theory series of Palgrave Macmillan/Red Globe Press. Currently she is working on a book discussing the cultural history of the right to bodily integrity in modern Europe. Together with Danielle Kinsey and Sanjam Ahluwalia she is editing the Oxford Handbook of the History of the Modern Body (2027).

Between 2018 and 2024 Willemijn led a team of three PhD candidates and one Postdoc, as the principal investigator of the research project Forensic Culture. A Comparative Analysis of Forensic Practices in Europe, 1930-2000 (FORCe), funded by an ERC Consolidator Grant. As part of this research project, in 2023 the edited volume  Forensic Cultures in Modern Europe (edited by Willemijn Ruberg, Lara Bergers, Pauline Dirven and Sara Serrano Martínez) was published by Manchester University Press.

Together with Elwin Hofman, Willemijn recently founded the Research Network for Culture, Law and the Body.

PhD supervision

Tijmen van Voorthuizen, ‘History and Heritage of Queer Bars in the Low Countries’ (daily supervisor: dr. Elwin Hofman)

David van Oeveren, ‘Evolving imagination of the Roman borderlands in the Netherlands, 1815-1945’, (promotor, daily supervisors: dr Gertjan Plets and dr Pieter Huistra)

Anna van der Weij, 'Dying on the edge. Burial practices in the Lower German limes area' (daily supervisor: dr Saskia Stevens)

Pauline Dirven, 'Embodied Performances of Forensic Expertise: Epistemic Virtues, Emotions, and Gender in British Forensic Culture 1920-1980' (defence: 6 September 2024)(promotor and daily supervisor, co-promotor dr Jochen Hung)

Lara Bergers, ‘Investigating Sexual Crime in the Netherlands, 1930-1980: Understanding Victims and Perpetrators’,(promotor and daily supervisor, co-promotor dr Fenneke Sysling)

Nathanje Dijkstra, 'Making Up Incapacity for Work? How Government Officials, Medical Experts and Disabled Workers Brought Incapacity for Work into Being in the First Dutch Social Security Law (1901-1967)’ (defended 12 January 2024) (promotor, second promotor: prof. Berteke Waaldijk)

Sara Serrano Martínez, ‘The Infanticide Article Under Franco, 1937-1963: ‘Leniency’, Judicial Discretion and Forensic Knowledge’ (defended 3 Nov. 2023) (promotor, second promotor: prof. Annette Mülberger)

Laura Nys, ‘Mixed feelings. Emotion, gender and discipline in ego-documents of youth offenders (1890-1965)' (member of doctoral supervisory committee; supervisors: Prof. Dr. Gita Deneckere (UGent) & Prof. Dr. Jenneke Christiaens (VUB), Ghent University (defended 2019)