Emiel Geurts is a historian specialised in modern European (integration) history. He is a lecturer in the department of European Studies at the University of Amsterdam. Additionally, he is a PhD candidate at the Chair of Modern European History at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (LMU). Before joining the LMU and UvA, he studied History at the Radboud University Nijmegen (BA programme, Research Master's programme). His RMA programme also branched out to Maastricht University and Leiden University, where he focused on the history of European integration and Dutch parliamentary culture respectively.
From 2024-2025, Emiel was a junior scholar in the CMY - Cambridge, Munich, Yale Research Seminar in the Contemporary History of Europe and the World, hosted by the history departments of Cambridge University, LMU Munich, and Yale University. Five early career scholars from each institution discussed their ongoing research and engaged in historiographical and methodological debates at the three host universities.
His dissertation concerns the 'greening' of the EC/EU's Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) from the 1970s to 2000. The research is conducted as part of the overarching ELEMENT project, which is funded by the German DFG (LMU Munich) and French ANR (Université Sorbonne). ELEMENT aims to provide the first comprehensive and long term history of the EC/EU's key role in environmental policy, while also critically assessing the limits of its scope and impact.
In his research on the CAP's greening, Emiel concentrates on a broad range of actors, including EC/EU institutions; national governments (particularly of France, Germany, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom); non-state institutions like environmental organisations and farmer interest groups; and the chemical pesticide industry. The study aims to shed light on how EC/EU agricultural policy elites dealt with increasing environmental concerns. Doing so, the work operates on the intersection of environmental, agricultural, and European integration history.
Importantly, the project aims to embed the CAP's greening trajectory in broader international developments and trends - particularly relating it to discussions on the EC/EU's global environmental impact and GATT trade negotiations.
Additionally, Emiel's research dealt with initiatives of Amnesty International and various Dutch environmental organisations to grasp and approach European organisations like the Council of Europe and the EC/EU. Other research interests include parliamentary history and culture.
Emiel conducted archival research during research stays in Belgium, France, Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and Italy (at the HAEU).
Emiel teaches in both Dutch and English on a broad array of subjects. These include European integration (history) and democracy, ideologies and practices of development aid and policy, European political history since 1815, and EU politics and policymaking through simulation.
'Abortus is geen heet hangijzer - dat heeft de politiek ervan gemaakt'. Interviewed by Valentijn de Hingh for de Correspondent, 5 July 2022.
‘Het Nederlandse abortusdebat in de jaren 1970-1980’, De Hofvijver 128:12, bulletin of the Montesquieu Institute (2022).
'Wat is de Europese identiteit? Een terugkerende vraag in crisistijd', Centre for Parliamentary History, Memorabel debat, 2021.