Article on Emotional Responses of Parents to Children’s Death

My article ‘Sadness, Hope, and Joy. The Visual Representation of Emotional Responses of Parents to Children’s Death in Early Modern Europe’ is now published online in Journal of Family History (January 2026) with fifteen images of portraits of families and children. See https://journals.sagepub.com/home/jfh

Paperback edition of Children’s Emotions in Europe, 1500-1900: A Visual History

In 2025 also a paperback edition (ISBN: 9781350198685) was published of my book Children’s Emotions in Europe, 1500-1900: A Visual History (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2025). See https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/childrens-emotions-in-europe-1500–1900-9781350150706/

Paperback edition of A Cultural History of Education available from 26 June 2025

In 2025, also a paperback edition was published of Jeroen J. H. Dekker (ed.),  A Cultural History of Education in the Renaissance (Volume 3 in: Gary McCulloch (ed.), A Cultural History of Education, 6 Volumes (London / New York / Oxford / New Delhi / Sydney: Bloomsbury Academic, 2025).

Committee for investigations into violence in out of home care of children and youth after the Second World War

In 2015, I became a member of the Committee for a preliminary investigation into violence in out of home care of children and youth after the Second World War. The task of this Committee, installed by the Minister of Justice, was to study the options and possibilities of an in-depth study of this subject. As a result of the report by this Committee, a new Committee, of which I also became a member, started its work in 2016. In june 2019, the report was delivered to the government. Report and all case studies can be found on https://www.commissiegeweldjeugdzorg.nl/eindrapport.

Recent publications

Dekker, Jeroen J.H., ‘From Sacral to Profane. The Visualization of Parental and Children’s Emotions in Early Modern Europe’, in Mette Buchardt (ed.), Educational  Secularization within Europe and Beyond: The Political Projects of Modernizing Religion through Education Reform (Oldenbourg / Berlin / Boston:  De Gruyter, 2025), 39-58 (open access:  https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783111337975/html#contents).

Dekker, Jeroen J. H., ‘Willem Frijhoff (1942–2024)’, Paedagogica Historica, International Journal of the History of Education, 60: 6 (2024), 943–947 (open access at https:/doi.org/10.1080/00309230.2024.2432796).

Dekker, Jeroen J.H., ‘Looking at the voices of the child. Ideas, challenges, and derailments in the educational space of the past’, Children and Youth Services Review Vol. 153 (2023), 8 pp., 106968.

Dekker, Jeroen J.H., ‘Story Telling through Fine Art. Public Histories of Childhood and Education in Exhibitions in the Netherlands and Belgium c. 1980 – c. 2020’, in Frederik Herman, Sjaak Braster and Maria del Mar del Pozo Andrés (eds.), Exhibiting the Past: Public Histories of Education (Volume 1, Public History from European Perspectives) (Oldenbourg: De Gruyter, 2022), 157-176.

Dekker, Jeroen J.H., ‘Educational Space in Time: Reflections on Limits and Options for
Educational Ambitions in History’, Nordic Journal of Educational History Vol. 9, no. 1 (2022), 3–25.

Dekker, Jeroen J.H., ‘In Search of Multiple Compatibility: Modernization, Secularization, Religion, and Education in History’, Bildungsgeschichte. International Journal for the Historiography of Education 11: 2, 2021,  171-175.

Dekker, Jeroen J.H., ‘Dangerous, Seductive, and Innovative. Visual Sources for the History of Education’, in Sarah Van Ruyskensvelde, Geert Thyssen, Frederik Herman, Angelo Van Gorp and Pieter Verstraete (eds.), Folds of Past, Present and Future. Reconfiguring Contemporary Histories of Education (Oldenbourg: De Gruyter, 2021), 383-404.

Dekker, J.J.H., ‘Introduction. Education in an Emerging Communication and Knowledge Society’. In: J.J.H. Dekker (ed.), A Cultural History of Education in the Renaissance (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020), 1-17.

Dekker, J.J.H. (ed.), A Cultural History of Education in the Renaissance. Volume 3 in: Gary McCulloch (ed.), A Cultural History of Education, 6 Volumes (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020), i-xii + 1-250.

Amsing, H.T.A. & J.J.H. Dekker, ‘Educating peace amid accusations of indoctrination. A Dutch peace education curriculum in the polarised political climate of the 1970s’, Paedagogica Historica 56: 3, 2020, 360-383.

Ruppert, Chr., C. Bijleveld, Mariëlle Bruning, J. J.H. Dekker, J. Hendriks, T. Mooren, C. van Nijnatten, W. Slot & M. de Winter, Onvoldoende beschermd. Geweld in de Nederlandse jeugdzorg van 1945 tot heden (Den Haag: Commissie Onderzoek naar Geweld in de Jeugdzorg, 2019).

Dekker, J.J.H., De pedagogische ruimte in de tijd [Educational Space in Time], (Groningen: Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, 2019).

Dekker, J.J.H., H.T.A. Amsing & I.J.M. Wichgers, ‘Education in a Nation Divided. The Contribution of School Acts to the Development of Dutch Mass Schooling in the Long Nineteenth Century’. In: J. Westberg, L. Boser and I. Brühwiler (eds.), School Acts: the Rise of Mass Schooling. Education Policy in the Long Nineteenth Century (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan / Springer Nature, 2019), pp. 93-118.

Recent lectures

(2025) School and Fear: Hitting and Regulating Children’s Emotions through Practices and Objects of Corporal Violence in Early Modern Europe, Presentation at PCW ‘Educational Practices and Objects of the Past: A Double Archaeology’, ISCHE 46 Conference in Lille, July 6, 2025.

(2024) From Rage to Happiness, from Sadness to Joy: The Visualization of Embodied Emotions of Children and Parents in Early Modern Europe. Lecture at Vormoderne Bildungsgeschichte online, Arbeitskreis Vormoderne Erziehungsgeschichte (AVE), section 1 (Historische Bildungsforschung) of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Erziehungswissenschaft (GfE), 7 November 2024.

(2024) Emoties van kinderen en ouders in vroeg-modern Europa (Emotions of Children and Parents in Early Modern Europe). Lecture at Noorderzon Festival of Performing Arts and Society, Groningen, 24 August 2024.

(2024) Anachronism: A Risk, An Inescapability, or A Necessity? Coping with Theories and Concepts in the History of Children’s Emotions. Lecture at Groningen Summer School, ‘Using Theory in the History of Education’, 27 June 2024, Groningen.

(2023) Analyzing Visual Sources: How to get closer to the educational past of early modern Europe? Presentation at Groningen Summer School, ‘Historical Analysis, Presentation and Narration’, 5 June, 2023, Groningen.

(2021) Making Childhood in Early Modern Europe Tangible: The Fine Art Approach. Presentation at Conference Stories on Childhood: History, Memory and Research, Riga, University of Latvia, 22 October 2021.

(2021) Looking at the Voices of the Child. Ideas, Challenges, and Derailments in the Educational Space of the Past. Key note at Conference ‘The Perspective of the Child’, EuSARF XVI, 2 September, 2021, Zürich.