News
New Assistant Professor dr. Ingrid de Zwarte
Ingrid de Zwarte studied History and Slavic Languages and Cultures at the University of Amsterdam. In February 2018, she completed her PhD in History at the same university and the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies with a thesis entitled ‘The Hunger Winter: Fighting Famine in the Occupied Netherlands, 1944-45’, which was awarded the ASH Dissertation Award 2017-18. The popularising version of her thesis, De Hongerwinter, was published last March by Prometheus. From September 2019, she will be an Assistant Professor at the Rural and Environmental History Group.
Her research explores the centrality of food and famine in modern armed conflict, with a specific interest in the wartime political use of hunger and food aid and its profound impact on societies. Before coming to Wageningen, she was postdoctoral researcher at the University of Oxford, working on the project ‘Hunger as a Weapon: A Comparative Study into the Politics of Famine and Relief’.
Together with researchers from the Radboud University and NIOD, Ingrid is co-applicant of the NWO NWA-funded project ‘Heritages of Hunger’, which investigates the past and present significance of European famines in educational institutions and the heritage sector. She also aims to set up a new research project at WUR that will examine the relationship between famine and decolonisation processes.
She looks forward to actively engaging with colleagues at WUR with whom she shares an interest in the study of food crises, modern warfare, humanitarian aid, and (neo-)colonial institutions.