Expertise

cultural history, national identity, historiography, comparative methodology, cultural memory

Biography

Simon Halink (Papendrecht, 1983) is a cultural historian specialized in the comparative study of national movements and the historical development of national identities in the course of the ´long nineteenth century´ (c. 1789-1914), particularly in small national communities such as Friesland, Iceland, and the Faroe Islands. He earned his Ph.D. degree from the University of Groningen in 2017, with a study on Old Norse mythology and national culture in Iceland. Since then, he has worked as a postdoctoral researcher and lecturer at the University of Iceland, and as an Assistant Professor in Modern History at Leiden University. Furthermore, he is actively involved in the Study Platform on Interlocking Nationalisms (headed by Joep Leerssen, University of Amsterdam) and the ensuing Encyclopedia of Romantic Nationalism in Europe.

Since 2021, Halink is affiliated with the Fryske Akademy. Here, he studies the development of Frisian national identity in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, in the broader context of European cultural history.