Yannick Lengkeek

I am a historian of modern Europe trained extensively in the methodologies of microhistory, everyday life history (Alltagsgeschichte), and social history 'from the bottom up' or 'from below.' My research and teaching interrogate individual and collective coping strategies and tactics in the face of hardship and oppression, including gaming (from card games to billiards), gambling and lottery play, as well as other activities largely deemed unproductive, idle, and decadent by authoritarian regimes the world over.

While my research has taken me as far as Indonesia, where I conducted research in the National Archives in Jakarta to learn more about the appropriation of Fascist and Nazi rituals, salutes, and ideological keywords by anticolonial nationalists associated with Partai Indonesia Raya ('Greater Indonesia Party'), my work centres predominantly around Southern Europe, particularly the Iberian peninsula.

My current research project, which is still under development, examines the choices and rationales behind individual decisions to opt out of 'mainstream' society in post-war Spain and France (roughly 1945-1975), including phenomena such as vagrancy, retreating from social life (similar to the Japanese Hikikomori phenomenon), and other forms of withdrawal from the normative frameworks of settled life in Western Europe. By looking at two distinct political systems (Spain and France) that share not only a geographical border but also deep histories of internal political division throughout the twentieth century, my work aims to historicise recent debates - many of them revived by the globally shared experience of a devastating pandemic - about the factors that foster togetherness and social exchange at the most fundamental level. 

Other areas of interest include:
- fascism and authoritarianism in a global perspective
- paramilitarism and far-right social movements
- histories of mobility
- history of crime and illicit activities, including black markets

I grew up in the Netherlands, Italy, and Germany, and completed my undergraduate studies at the University of Tübingen. After graduating with an MPhil in Colonial and Global History at Leiden University, I moved to St Andrews, Scotland, where I completed a PhD in Modern History. My doctoral research was funded by the European Research Council, and I remain affiliated with the project Dictatorship as experience: A comparative history of everyday life and the ‘lived experience’ of dictatorship in Mediterranean Europe (1922-1975) at the University of St Andrews.