My Work on a Centennium Book

By Chiara Evans

When I started studying in Utrecht four years ago, I imagined myself attending courses and writing papers that only one teacher might read. To my own surprise, as I round off my bachelor’s, I have opened myself up to opportunities that have been much more enriching than I could have imagined on my own. Towards the end of my year as Commissioner of Education for the UHSK (Utrechtse Historische Studentenkring), Mette Bruinsma reached out to me and my board members with her idea to write a history of the UHSK to celebrate the quickly approaching Centennium. Next year on March 26, the association will turn 100 years old—an idea that sometimes feels impossible for me to wrap my head around. I often like to imagine what the students in 1926 would say about the association today and the traditions we now have. I wonder how they might react to an American (or any other international student, for that matter) belonging to the same association as they once did.

I wanted to join the students and teachers involved in creating this book because of my curiosity about what those students might say about today’s association—but also because I wondered about the identity of the UHSK. When I pursued a board year, it was because I was drawn to the “tradition” and “legacy” of what it meant to be a board member. The moment I put on my board suit, I remember thinking I had joined a long line of students similar to me. However, the work done on the book has taught me that that couldn’t be further from the truth. As the book shows, the association reinvents itself many times, and my own experience represents just a small sliver of the UHSK’s identity. While conducting and reading interviews with former board members for the book, I recognized that the story of a study association said a lot about the political and cultural mood of a country. From my perspective, the UHSK shockingly acts as a microcosm for broader Dutch society at times. (I am thinking about what will be written about protests in the Netherlands or internationalization.) Learning about different protests that occurred at the University or different waves and trends in Dutch society taught me so much about the city where I live and the University where I study.

Outside of learning more about the UHSK and its history, helping out with the book gave me the chance to see what it could be like to become a “professional historian.” My own contributions to the book have been helping with interviews, reviewing, and writing a column. Currently, I am co-writing a second column and helping with peer review—a sometimes daunting task when you’re asked to look at a professor’s written work.

When I started writing my own column, I chose the Selection Committee—the process by which the association chooses new boards. In this column, I experimented for the first time with the combination of interviews and archival research. Up until now, my degree had prepared me to follow the structure of academic literature, where I fill a gap that I find in historiography. This was one of the first times I attempted to paint an image of a moment in time, namely the date that the association decided to change the process of board formation.

The most memorable part of the process for me was helping conduct the interview with two women former board members, who both chaired the association. One chaired in the 90s and the other only three years ago. Both of these women contributed so much time and effort into the association, which I really admired during the interview. It was interesting to see how many aspects had remained the same in the decade between them and how much had changed.

Since most of the work, research, and communication for the book has been conducted in Dutch, this year I have really challenged myself. Daring to speak up in meetings has been and remains a challenge. Wondering if I am a well-enough equipped historian or fluent enough speaker to rise to the challenge has at times held me back. (Luckily, I have been able to write and edit in English.) Nonetheless, this experience has been a huge step outside of my academic comfort zone. I realized the fastest way to learn the language was to dare to try and join an experience like this one.

Witnessing the questions around a book becoming published, the peer-review process, and most interesting of all, the historical research process, has been a real honor for me. It has inspired me to want to write and research for the rest of my life (no hyperbole intended).