About

Welcome to the website of Gerben Zaagsma. I am an Assistant Professor in Contemporary History at the Centre for Contemporary and Digital History (C²DH) of the University of Luxemburg. With a background in modern Jewish/Yiddish history, my current research and teaching focus mostly on the fields of digital and public history, Holocaust & genocide studies, as well as music history.

Before joining C²DH in August 2017, I worked in various professonal roles and settings in Italy, Great Britain, the Netherlands and Germany; please see my CV for more information. You can also check my talks and list of publications. Several recent papers and lectures can be found on Zenodo.

My work currently revolves around three main areas:

• History of digital history
• Censorship of history online
• Digital literacy for historians

See the research page for more details.

Latest updates:

• Program out now: Workshop History of Digital History between East and West, 5-6 february 2026 in Luxembourg.
• New article: Facing the History Machine: Toward Histories of Digital History in History of Humanities 9/2 (2024) 451-491.
• The recording of my keynote lecture ‘When Literacy Goes Digital: Rethinking the Ethics and Politics of Digitisation’ for Digital History Switzerland 2024 is now available on Zenodo.
• Now online: recording of Creating Digital Archives: A Workshop with Gerben Zaagsma & Merit Maran.