dr. IJJ (Ingrid) de Zwarte

Ingrid de Zwarte (1988) is an Assistant Professor at the Economic and Environmental History Group (RHI). She studied History and Slavic Languages and Cultures at the University of Amsterdam. In 2018, she completed her PhD in History at that 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’ (ASH Dissertation Award 2017-18). The popularising version of her thesis, De Hongerwinter, was published by Prometheus (2019), and the academic monograph, The Hunger Winter, appeared with Cambridge University Press (2020).

Before coming to Wageningen, she was a Lecturer in Global History at the Erasmus University Rotterdam (2017-18) and a Niels Stensen Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Oxford (2018-19), working the research project ‘Hunger as a Weapon: A Comparative Study into the Politics of Famine and Relief’.

De Zwarte’s research explores the role of food and famine in modern conflict in the broadest sense: from hunger as a political and military tool in warfare to social self-organisation in times of hunger, and from the demographic impact of famine to the effects of hunger on migration and state formation.

Together with M. Corporaal (PI) and L. Jensen, De Zwarte has been awarded a NWO NWA-ORC Grant for the project ‘Heritages of Hunger: Societal Reflections on Past European Famines in Education, Commemoration and Musealisation’ (2019-24). Working with famine experts from sixteen countries, it investigates the past and present significance of European famines in educational institutions and the heritage sector. 

She currentl also works on the research project 'Food, Famine, and the End of Empire in Indonesia, 1940-1950' (NWO Veni). This project investigates the dynamics between warfare, famine and decolonisation processes during the Japanese occupation and Indonesian War of Independence.

De Zwarte is affiliated as a researcher to the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust, and Genocide Studies. Together with Jeroen Candel, in 2020 she was the editor of the volume Tien miljard monden: hoe we de wereld gaan voeden in 2050. In 2023 she received an Early Career Award from the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences for her work on the politics of famine.

Email: ingrid.dezwarte@wur.nl