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Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences

In our teaching and research we highlight major developments in societies and cultures as they have unfolded during the modern and contemporary eras. We seek to gain understanding of the interrelationships of Europeanisation, globalisation, scientific and technological development, political change and cultural innovation. We are interested in how today’s societies cope with these challenges through, amongst others, practices of remembrance, governance techniques, strategies for managing knowledge, technologies and risks and ways of dealing with diversity and inequality. Yet, understanding our present world is impossible without insight into its past. This is why historical research serves as a key element of our scholarly and educational identity.

 

 

News

PAS Festival

FASoS researchers take the stage at PAS Festival on 4 and 5 September

What do NATO, oligarchs, Limburgish, lobbyists and 50 objects from Maastricht University’s history have in common? They are all on the programme when FASoS researchers take the stage at this year’s PAS Festival.
Anna and Ferenc
  • Researchers

Two FASoS researchers receive grants to make teaching materials openly accessible

Anna Harris will document the improvised inventions that emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic. Ferenc Laczó will bring together interviews with leading historians on major turning points in contemporary Europe.
Sara De Vuyst
  • Researchers

Sara De Vuyst receives grants for research on older women with autism

Because diagnostic criteria have historically been based on male characteristics, many women only receive an autism diagnosis later in life. Yet little is known about how they experience this life-changing event, the stereotypes they encounter, or the support available to them.
Marlies Vermeulen

Cartopology: where the map, the person, and the place come together

Marlies Vermeulen is an artistic researcher at What Art Knows (Zuyd University of Applied Sciences), teacher, and co-founder of the Institute of Cartopology. She developed the new discipline of cartopology during her PhD research and defended her PhD at Maastricht University in June 2026.
Michiel Bron
  • Researchers

Michiel Bron wins inaugural William Burr Prize in Nuclear History

Michiel Bron, who obtained his PhD at FASoS, has won the inaugural William Burr Prize in Nuclear History for his dissertation The Petro-Atom . The prize recognises outstanding nuclear history research and includes a book contract with McGill-Queen's University Press.