Margit van der Steen

Biography

After studying history at Radboud University Nijmegen, Margit van der Steen spent ten years at Utrecht University as director of the Dutch Women’s Studies Association. She gained her doctorate at Leiden University in 2011 with a dissertation about the socialist, sociologist, and feminist Hilda Verwey-Jonker. In 2020, Margit van der Steen was appointed Knight of the Order of Orange-Nassau for her commitment to society and science.

Since 2011 she has been working at Huygens Institute as managing director of the national Political History Research School (OPG) and as secretary to the International Association for Political History. The OPG is the working community of about 350 political historians in the Netherlands. Core tasks of the OPG are fulfilling the platform function for the political history field and providing high-quality education to PhD and research master’s students working in the Netherlands and Flanders. The OPG is an active member of the Association for Political History.

Van de Steen combined the part-time position as managing director OPG with postdoc positions at Leiden University and Radboud University Nijmegen. In 2022, she became a guest researcher at the Huygens Institute. Her research and publications are in the fields of political history, biography and gender issues. She is currently conducting research on the more than two hundred women who held political positions at the local level after obtaining the passive women’s suffrage.

On behalf of the Dutch government, she participated in the United Nations General Assembly in 2003. As director of AETAS. Bureau for Age Issues, Gender and Diversity, she worked as an independent researcher and consultant for knowledge institutions, the national police, ministries and civil society organisations since 2001. For ten years, she chaired the Dutch-Flemish Association for Gender History.