The boards of governors of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel and Ghent University have approved a framework agreement that allows for a structural and far-reaching cooperation between both institutions. An Alliance research group brings together at least 6 researchers from UGent and from VUB (and possibly also from their association partners). These researchers are active around a common research line.

Social History since 1750 places social change at the centre of its analyses and relates history to contemporary society. Social history calls for a pre-eminently integrated approach that aims to interconnect historical circumstances, structures and processes with human agency, experience and subjectivity, discourse and perceptions, ideas and practices. Social history transcends history in compartments – economy, politics, culture – and aims at historical synthesis and interdisciplinarity. Research programmes include (1) movements, protest and contention, (2) war, crisis and society, and (3) meta history and public history.