Edwina Hagen runs the Secretariat Dutch Science Institutes Abroad (NWIBs), located in Cairo, Athens, Florence, Rome and Saint Petersbourg. As an Assistant Professor of Cultural History she is active as a historical researcher, while she also supervises a small number of BA and MA theses per year. 

In previous years Hagen worked in the education field both at management level and in her role as an university lecturer on projects related to current educational issues, such as internationalisation and innovative teaching methods. Hagen completed the Educational Leadership Programme at the Centre for Academic Teaching (Utrecht University). In 2015 her faculty-wide module design for first-year students was nominated for the VU Educational Innovation Award. She served as BA Programme Coordinator and Chair of the BA Programme Committee. She taught courses at BA and MA level on Early Modern European History, Cultural History, Revolutions and History of Emotions; supervised many BA and MA theses and has been co-promotor and member of a promotion committee several times. Parallel to this she taught courses at the Amsterdam University College for almost ten years. In this context she designed History Lab, a form of practical and immersive place-based learning. During the 2024 edition students investigated the archives of the Holland Land Company at the Amsterdam City Archives

In terms of research Hagen is active in various areas. She publishes her own work (see below) in peer-reviewed journals and popular magazines; acts as editor of historical journals, devised and produced various special issues. She presents her work at international conferences and in the media and has organised many lecture afternoons and conferences. In the summer of 2023 for example, she organised together with Martijn Icks (UvA) and Alessandro Nai (UvA) a three-day conference on Illiberalism and the Erosion of Civic Rights in Amsterdam, for more than sixty scholars from all over the world.    

Office hours: on Tuesday, or contact her via email (her work days are Monday, Tuesday & Wednesday).

Hagen's qualitative and biographical approach focuses on the interplay between culture and power in the political sphere and within the context where politics, court culture and diplomacy intersect. She is an expert of the revolutionary period in the Netherlands (1780-1815). In a broader sense, her research explores (the historical problem of) individual agency, as evidenced by people’s changing practices, emotions and attitudes toward power and political authority. Her work highlights in- and exclusionary processes that are at play in the creation of political subjects, reinforced by religion (antipapism related to civic virtues and national identity) and changing cultural norms about gender and (political) emotions. Articles and chapters by Hagen on cultural political topics such as reputation politics, emotional self-fashioning, character assasination or the ways in which eighteenth century women exercised (informal) power, have been published in peer reviewed journals and books as well as in popular historical magazines. Hagen is inspired by a diverse range of historical material, particularly personal letters, political print culture and (auto)biographies. 

Hagen’s PhD on Dutch Enlightened and Protestant Anti-Papism around 1800 received national coverage by the Dutch press and was praised by historians as ‘an exemplary dissertation’ (Professor Emeritus G.J. Schutte) and ‘Darntonian’ (Professor Emeritus A.W.F.M. van de Sande). In 2012 her Libris History Prize nominated political biography on the statesman Rutger Jan Schimmelpenninck (1761-1825) and his wife Catharina Nahuys (1770-1844) attracted nation-wide media attention. The Prime Minister of the Netherlands, Mark Rutte, received the first copy.

Hagen is a Research Affiliate of:

• the Research Lab on Character Assassination and Reputation Politics (CARP)
• HDC Centre for Religious History

and member of the board of:

• the Amsterdam Centre for Cross-Disciplinary Emotion and Sensory Studies

Recent Special Issues

Hagen edited a Special Issue of the Dutch Journal of Gender History (Historica. Tijdschrift voor Gendergeschiedenis, 2024, jrg. 47, no.3): Gender & Character Assassination

Together with Martijn Icks (UvA) Hagen co-edited a Special Issue of the Dutch Journal of History (Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis, 2021, jrg 134, no.2): Character Assassination & Media

Hagen is currently working on several article and book projects, which include:

• source analysis of the reputation-politics of Wilhelmina of Prussia, Princess of Orange (1751-1820). (Contribution to Routledge Character Assasination, Illiberalism and the Erosion of Civic Rights). 
• several peer-reviewed articles on Eighteenth Century Women's Letters as a Diplomatic Practice (one of which with Kristine Dyrmann, University of Oxford; Routledge Studies in Eighteenth-Century Cultures and Societies)
• interdisciplinary and international edited volumes on: 1. Auto/Biography and Reputation Politics (co-editor and contributor; Routledge) & 2. Character Assasination, Illiberalism and the Erosion of Civic Rights (co-editor with Martijn Icks (UvA) & Andrew Armstrong (George Mason University, Fairfax US).
• case studies based on extensive primary source research in the archives of the Holland Land Company in Amsterdam & New York - mainly focused on Adam Gerard Mappa (1754-1828), a Dutch revolutionary, (sub)agent for the HLC and co-founder of an Unitarian church (NY)    

Media

Hagen is sometimes consulted by the media for expert views in relation to her research topics: 

De Jortcast De karaktermoord op Ma Flodder

https://www.npostart.nl/de-strijd-om-het-binnenhof/29-01-2021/VPWON_1309353

Hagen herself recentely interviewed the British professor Elaine Chalus about her life and work: "Women also practised politics before suffrage"   

& the British professor Marisa Linton: "Revolutionary politicians were more than an ideology on legs"                        

No ancillary activities

Ancillary activities are updated daily

Since 2013: Board Member of the Stichting (Foundation) Daendels (website: stichtingdaendels.nl)

Member of the editorial board of: Historica. Tijdschrift voor Gendergeschiedenis