Peter Vermeersch

Artist, Blogger, Concerned citizen, Educator/Teacher, Writer/Editor

I'm a professor of political science at the University of Leuven in Belgium (KU Leuven) and a Senior Research Fellow of the Belgian National Fund for Scientific Research (FWO). In 2007 and 2008, I was a visiting scholar at the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University. My academic work focuses on ethnic minority mobilization, Europeanization, and nationalism in Central Europe. I'm the author of the book "The Romani Movement: Minority Politics and Ethnic Mobilization in Contemporary Central Europe" (Berghahn Books, Oxford and New York, 2006), which studies the recent attempts of Romani activists in Central Europe to form a political movement and to influence domestic and international politics and policies. My current book project investigates resurgent nationalism and domestic political competition in the new EU member states in Central Europe. It focuses mainly on Poland. Other work of mine has appeared in academic journals such as Ethnic and Racial Studies, Communist and Post-Communist Studies, and East European Politics and Societies. I also write essays and poetry. Poems of mine have appeared in the Belgian poetry magazine "Het liegend konijn" (The Lying Rabbit). I edited the collection "Het huis is groter aan de binnenkant" (The House is Larger on the Inside) and "The European Constitution in Verse". I'm a graduate of the University of Leuven in Belgium but also studied in Kraków, Warsaw, and Venice. I was born in Bruges in 1972 and grew up in a village not far from that town. Now I live in Brussels.

Poetry and politics

The European Constitution in Verse. In 2005, the European Union's constitutional treaty was solidly rejected by French and Dutch referendums. It was generally thought of as a technical, boring and unreadable text. The writer David Van Reybrouck and I wanted to see whether we could create an alternative version, one in poetry. Not to help eurocrats with popularizing the institutions of the EU, but to put the debate on Europe where it belongs: among the free citizens concerned. What's more, we wanted a Constitution that would actually be a good read. More than 50 poets from all EU member states participated. Among them such well-known figures as Nobel Prize winner Seamus Heaney and Cervantes Prize winner Antonio Gamoneda, but also exciting new voices such as Petr Borkovec from the Czech Republic and some poets from outside Europe who currently live as refugees in Europe (like Chenjerai Hove from Zimbabwe). The result was published in April 2009, see http://europeanconstitutioninverse.com

Minority Groups, philology, Poetry/Creative Writing, Political Science (National and International)