Dr G. Kets (Gaard)

Communist revolutions around 1918 still serve as sources of inspiration and models for actual revolutions throughout the world. My PhD project (focusing on failed revolutions in Germany and the Netherlands, 1917-1923) studies the interaction between people and the revolutionary elite, and the repertoires used to express their politics. It uses a grassroots approach to analyze the common (wo)man’s motives, and an analysis of the elites’ ideas to understand the processes fueling revolutionary movements, the motives of the ‘followers’ for accepting specific leaders, the means used to disseminate the elites’ ideas, and the way the interaction between both reshaped the revolutionary ideal.

Besides this PhD project, I co-supervise think tanks for the Radboud Honours Academy. Additionally, I serve as programme director for their interdisciplinary master programmes in 2018-2019.