Peter Vermeersch

I'm a full Professor of Politics and Central and Eastern European Studies at KU Leuven in Belgium, where my research focuses on minorities, memory politics, democratisation, and pro-democracy movements in Central and Eastern Europe. Over the years, I've also written about ethnic conflict, reconciliation, restorative justice, and Roma activism. The research group of which I’m part is called LINES (Leuven International and European Studies) and is based at the Faculty of Social Sciences of the university.

I’ve earned my PhD in Political Science at KU Leuven in 2002 and hold MA degrees in Slavic Languages, Eastern European Studies, and Cultural Studies. I live in Brussels, but my academic path has taken me (and still takes me) to a range of wonderful cities: Kraków, Warsaw, Prague, Budapest, and Sarajevo, among others. In 2007 and 2008, I spent time as a postdoctoral visiting fellow at Harvard’s Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies.

In Leuven, I co-founded and co-direct the Forum on Central and Eastern Europe, a platform for exploring the histories, politics, societies, and cultures of the region in the broadest sense. I've served in leadership roles across academic and civic organisations, including as Head of Department at Political Science KU Leuven and Research Coordinator for LINES (2014–2020). I'm currently a Member of the Board of Directors of the Association for the Study of Nationalities (ASN). From 2012 to 2016, I was also on the board of PEN Flanders, part of the global PEN International network. I'm also a contributing editor for DWB, Belgium’s oldest Dutch-language literary journal.

In addition to academic writing, I regularly venture into essays, reportage, and books of narrative non-fiction - published in both Dutch and English. My books in Dutch, Ex (2014), Aantekeningen bij een moord (2019), and Polsslag (2025), have been published by De Bezige Bij (Amsterdam).