Professor Kristoffel Lieten gave his inaugural lecture on 21 November 2003 in the auditorium of the Universiteit van Amsterdam.
The lecture is entitled "Child Labour. Pressing Questions and Contours of Research".
The lecture marks the official start of Lieten's professorship in history, specializing in historical and social aspects of child labour.
This chair is endowed by the IISH, with support from the Foundation for International Research on Exploitation of Working Children (IREWOC).
Kristoffel Lieten (Belgium, 1946) studied in Antwerp, The Hague, Reading and New Delhi, where he obtained degrees in linguistics, political science and history respectively. He did his PH.D. under the guidance of late professor Gerrit Huizer at the University of Nijmegen on the triangular relationship between the trade union movement, the nationalist movement and the colonial state in Mumbai, 1928-29. He has worked extensively on political developments in South Asia and on issues related to development sociology. For a long time, he combined his academic work with journalism as the correspondent for the Dutch and Belgian radio in South Asia.
Lieten joined the department of Anthropology and Non-Western Sociology at the University of Amsterdam in 1978. He presently holds the Child Labour chair at the University of Amsterdam and at the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam. He is also a visiting professor at the Institute for Human Development in New Delhi. He is the director of the IREWOC Foundation (Institute for Research on Working Children) and in that capacity Dr. Lieten has initiated several research projects on child labour and child agency in various countries across the globe.
His present research interests relate to aspects of child labour, globalisation and development and development aid.