I seem to have spent much of my professional life involved with European Studies. My first teaching appointment was in the European Studies department in Manchester, which stopped me settling into the 19th-century niche which my PhD research should have afforded. I was pushed firmly into the 20th century and given a whole continent to master. And there, in the UK in 1973, at the edge of history and the cusp of the future, lay the European Economic Community. In that year, in my 20th century entry course, it warranted one whole lecture to itself. It eventually expanded to three, in a schedule of twenty-four. Then, in 1980, I went to the Netherlands, by now firmly committed to 20th-century research but my work on post-war reconstruction soon brought me face-to-face with the fact that Dutch national reconstruction was impossible without European reconstruction, and so I found myself grappling with early initiatives for European integration. This was the moment that European archives were beginning to open and interest in the period as a subject for ‘serious research’ grew. Since the Dutch archive regime was more relaxed than that of neighbouring countries, working in the Netherlands gave me a ‘competitive advantage’ and I began to work closely with the research group at the European University Institute in Florence. In 1987, I was appointed to the chair of Contemporary History there and became director of its research project on the History of European Integration.

I returned to the Netherlands in 1995 as Professor of Economic and Social History at Leiden University and found myself teaching a whole range of historical periods. However, I missed teaching European history to non-historians and I brought this to the attention of the faculty. At this time, student numbers were falling, and one reason given had been the lack of connectedness with the labour market. My personal moan, therefore, coincided with a policy change already underway. As a result, I was asked to set up and direct an undergraduate ‘Practical Studies’ programme, which began in 2001 and which included an interdisciplinary programme in European Union Studies.