Nieuwe PLAG — the Nieuwe Plattelandsgeschiedenis (New Rural History) research group — studies the political and cultural history of the Dutch countryside. Dutch historiography has traditionally focused far more on cities than on the countryside: the national historical canon makes room for the port of Rotterdam, for instance, but rarely for the twentieth-century land consolidation that reshaped almost the entire Dutch landscape, together with the lives of rural communities and the country's ecosystems.

In 2025, Judith Pollmann was awarded the Spinoza Prize. She decided to use it to give a new impulse to the study of rural history, focusing in particular on its political and cultural dimensions. Academic rural history in the Netherlands has traditionally concentrated on agricultural and landscape history; a great deal of valuable research into other aspects of rural life takes place at the local level, but it rarely connects to the wider academic debate — so comparisons across time and place remain rare.

With the Spinoza Prize funding, the Nieuwe PLAG research group aims to change that. A website and a handbook are being developed to support researchers working on Dutch rural history, and new research is encouraged to help integrate rural history more fully into broader national and international historiographical debates.

Alongside this website, the group is preparing the Handboek Nieuwe Plattelandsgeschiedschrijving — the first comprehensive overview of the political and cultural history of the Dutch countryside, written for academics and for anyone who wants to understand their own region better. It is expected to appear in 2027.

This page is a short English introduction to our work — the rest of this website is currently only available in Dutch. For questions, collaboration or contributions, please get in touch via our contact page.