Raymond Detrez


Raymond Detrez is Professor of East European history and cultures and modern Greek history at the University of Ghent, Belgium.

Biography

He has studied Eastern European languages and history at the University of Ghent and specialised in Bulgarian philology at the University of Sofia. For around two decades, he worked as a producer of the Belgian Radio and then became a professor of Eastern European history and culture. In 1986, he received his Ph.D. with a thesis on the autobiography of Grigor Parlichev. Detrez has published books and articles on 19th and 20th century Balkan history, minority questions and nationalism. From 2000 until his retirement in 2013, he was a director of the Centre of Southeast European studies at the University of Ghent and also taught at the Catholic University of Leuven. Detrez has conducted research mainly into three areas: historical approaches to pre-national collective identities on the Balkans; linguistic approaches to national identity on the Balkans and the image of Eastern Europe in the West and vice versa in literature and culture.

Publications