Rik Röttger

Rik Röttger was trained as contemporary historian at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. As a researcher he investigated the cultural-political history and party formation of the radical liberal movement in the Belgian capital, publishing on liberal thought and the anticlerical, Masonic political propaganda before 1914. In 2008 he became the Director of the Hof van Busleyden Museum, the city museum of Mechelen and an important heritage hub of the Humanist tradition in the Low Countries. He left the academic and heritage field in 2010 to take up an elected executive office in the Province of Antwerp. After studying Public Management (UAMS) in 2018-2019 he became national director of Hujo, the Flemish Young Humanist movement untill June 2022. He is member of the General Assembly of the RIKZ.Z, the governing body for non-confessional ethical education in Flemish public schools. In 2021 he joined CAVA as  full time researcher. His current work in collaboration with Dr. Ellen Van Impe is on the institutional history of the official body of organized secularism in Flanders, the Unie Vrijzinige Verenigingen (UVV). He is moreover generally interested in the political action of Freethought, the pillarization of the Humanist family in Belgium, the founding networks of Humanistisch Verbond and UVV, the creation of the profession of ethics teachers and their role in citizenship education after 1958. 

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

• Rottger, R. (2005). Een rode draad voor een blauw verhaal. De links-liberale uitwerking van mimetische representatie en de opvattingen over democratisch burgerschap in België, 1893-1900. Bijdragen en Mededelingen Betreffende de Geschiedenis der Nederlanden, 3, 435-465.
• Rottger, R. (2006). Capitol and capital. Het 'moment Anspach' in de Brusselse urbanisatie en liberale politieke cultuur (1860-1880). Stadsgeschiedenis (Hilversum), 1(1), 27-51.