– This event is in Dutch –
📅 October 8th, 2026
🕦 11:30 – 13:00 uur
📍 Aula, Frans van Hasselt Hall, TU Delft
🍽️ Including a vegetarian lunch
Speaker: prof. dr. Ronald Kroeze, Professor of Parliamentary History and Director of the Centre for Parliamentary History at Radboud University.
Election results, cabinet crises, economic uncertainty, and major societal challenges often create the impression that trust in political institutions is increasingly under pressure. But how exceptional is the current situation really? Dutch politics is constantly evolving, and many of today’s urgent issues have much deeper historical roots.
During this TU Delft Futures Seminar, Ronald Kroeze will place contemporary Dutch politics in a broader historical perspective. Drawing on political events, crises, and societal developments, he will demonstrate how political relationships and institutions evolve over time, and how trust is built, strengthened, and sometimes diminished.
Questions explored during this seminar include:
- Which political patterns continue to reappear over time?
- When does public dissatisfaction actually develop into a political crisis?
- What can parliamentary history teach us about today’s political landscape?
For TU Delft, these questions are particularly relevant because the university is closely connected to its political and societal environment. Public support for investments in science, education, and knowledge infrastructure depends on trust: trust of citizens in politics and public institutions, and trust of politics and society in the value of science. Looking beyond current events helps us better understand long-term developments in the relationship between politics, society, and knowledge institutions, and what these trends may mean for the future of TU Delft.
