Paul VAN DE LAAR

Professor of Urban History. Head of History Department, Erasmus School of History, Culture and Communication, Erasmus University Rotterdam. Rotterdam, The Netherlands.

Paul van de Laar (1959) holds a chair in cities as a portal of globalization and urban history and is head of the History department, Erasmus School of History, Culture and Communication. Between 2013 and 2020 he was general and artistic director of Museum Rotterdam, the city museum of Rotterdam, and developed great expertise in the heritage of diversity. His research focuses on comparative port city history and migration history. He is one of the principal investigators associated with the HERA Joint Research Programme: ‘Public Spaces: Culture and Integration in Europe’. PLEASURESCAPES. Port Cities’ Transnational Forces of Integration (Barcelona, Gothenburg, Hamburg, and Rotterdam) (2019-2021) https://pleasurescapes.eu/. He is a core group member of the Leiden-Delft-Erasmus PortCityFutures Centre (https://www.portcityfutures.nl/home). His research focuses on comparative port city history and migration history.