Historians in conversation - Dr. Rudolf Dekker

How do historians build their career, what motivates them and how they deal with professional and personal challenges? What shapes their professional path? Dr Michaël Green from the Faculty of Philosophy and History welcomes you to his podcast, where he will be inviting interesting guests to explore their stories.

In the second episode of the podcast “Historians in Conversation”, the guest of Dr. Michaël Green is Dr. Rudolf Dekker (b. 1951), who is best known for his research into the historical sources known as “egodocuments”. These are diaries, letters, memoirs and other sources where the authors wrote about themselves. He is the director of the Center for the Study of Egodocuments and History in the Netherlands. The talk focuses on Rudolf Dekker’s early days as a child and adolescent in Amsterdam, his study and the decision to pursue history as profession, as well as choice for various research projects he conducted. Among the topic he worked on we find history of childhood, popular apprising, gender and queer history, source editing and contemporary state of affairs in the discipline. The final part of the talk is focusing on his recent publication on the topic of plagiarism in historical research.