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This paper presents Ghent University’s initiative to launch thematic interdisciplinary SSH-consortia (IDC) with focus on societal impact. After a pilot phase the SSH-consortia are recently evaluated to receive sustainable funding and embedment in the University (policy) structure with the objective to enhance societal impact of SSH-research. During the pilot phase the consortia developed organically bottom-up and have been evaluated externally. The core of the consortia lies on fostering interdisciplinarity and societal value creation leading to societal impact. A central key position within the consortium is the coordinator who is permanently assigned to guarantee a sustainable working and development of the consortia. The pilot phase showed that the interdisciplinary cooperation between the consortia and the with the central Directorate for Research Affairs provides a valuable extra dimension in the working on societal impact.

The history of Belgian feminism has hitherto been written almost exclusively from within a national framework, portraying the image of a moderate and backward movement fragmented along party-political lines. Following the relational and reflexive approach of ‘entangled history’, this article argues that the transnational intersections of Belgian, Dutch and French feminisms, profoundly challenge this ‘pillarisated’ categorisation, allowing in particular for a reassessment of the socialist and the catholic wing of the movement for women’s rights. The transnational perspective brings to light, first, the introduction and persistence in Belgium of a radical left-wing feminist tradition and, second, the French-Belgian-Dutch intersections of catholic feminism. In both cases these transnational entanglements, cutting across the presumed boundaries of ideology, (class) and party-politics, demonstrate that the framework of ‘pillarisation’ cannot cover the overtones of Belgian feminism. This contribution concludes with a tentative exploration of how the First World War impacted on these transnational connections and collective identities.

In 1899 the Dutch feminist and educationist Nellie van Kol caused sensation with the publication of the influential essay What shall our children read? in the review De Gids. Her ideas reinvigorated in both the Netherlands and Belgium an age-old debate about what standards children’s literature should meet. Even before the First World War, van Kol’s essay found a favourable response in Ghent, among a group of feminists led by Céline Dangotte, who founded a children’s library in 1909. The concept of such a children’s reading room originated in the United States and was grafted onto a local network of societies, ideologies and practices. In this contribution we focus on the interpretation of good children’s literature. The Ghent children’s library established a number of criteria to determine what makes a good children’s book. Subsequently, children’s books were assessed accordingly. These reviews have been preserved and they disclose how the theory was put into practice. Finally, we will also discuss a number of other initiatives to help children read better and different literature, that is, the periodical Asselsch Blad (which published a children’s supplement), and the series of picture books Collection du Petit Artiste, edited by Dangotte (1917-1918). Léon Spillaert, among others, made a contribution to these series, but it has not yet been studied as an experiment in art education.