3 June 2026
The project emerged within the research network Environment & Society. When the parliamentary inquiry into natural gas extraction in Groningen started in 2021, researchers from different parts of the faculty decided to follow it together. 'Our research and teaching were already concerned with contested relationships to the environment and with injustice in how risks and negative consequences are handled,' says historian and editor Peter van Dam. 'We asked one another how, starting from those questions, we viewed the parliamentary inquiry and the history of gas extraction. What stood out from different disciplinary backgrounds now that the subject at hand often also affected us personally? Which questions were not being addressed? During the inquiry, the focus was mainly on responsibility, damage and compensation. Important questions, but not sufficient to grasp the full story.'
The discussions first took shape in the newsletter Tot op de bodem and in meetings with stakeholders, journalists and other experts. These eventually resulted in a volume of thirteen chapters in which researchers from various disciplines examine both the history and the ongoing repercussions of gas extraction.
One of the contributions in the volume is by historian Jeroen van Zanten, who investigated how gas extraction reverberates in ideas about citizenship and regional identity in northeast Groningen. According to Van Zanten, discontent in the region cannot be traced back solely to gas extraction itself, but also to a longer history of unfulfilled promises and socio-economic choices made outside the region.
In this context, he points to a contrast with Norway. Whereas that country placed revenues from oil and gas extraction in a sovereign wealth fund to allow future generations to share in the benefits and to reduce regional inequality, the Netherlands chose to have gas revenues flow directly into the state budget.
'The revenues were used for current policies and for projects intended to stimulate economic development, including in regions with unemployment or socio-economic disadvantage, such as the North,' says Van Zanten. 'But many of those expectations ultimately were not fulfilled.'
According to him, this leads to an experience of being on the periphery: the idea that important decisions are taken elsewhere and that regions only come into view when they are required to deliver something. Van Zanten also recognises this in what he calls the 'horizon of expectations' of residents: the extent to which people feel they have influence over their own future. 'In the Randstad, people are more likely to feel that they have control over their lives, that they can make choices and create opportunities. In Groningen you more often see the feeling that major developments are determined elsewhere and that you yourself have only limited influence over them.'
Van Zanten argues that this carries over into current debates on energy and infrastructure. 'For many people in Groningen, new energy projects confirm once again the idea that their region is considered important mainly when something has to be extracted, built or solved there.'
Cultural scholar Esther Peeren likewise places Groningen in a broader historical context. In her chapter, she investigates how stories about the countryside are told in films, documentaries and literature, and which images thereby become dominant.
'I noticed that the Dutch countryside is often idealised as a place where everything is better, healthier and more close-knit,' Peeren explains. 'The consequences of gas extraction show that this image is not self-evident, and in fact never has been. If you look further back, you see that Groningen and Drenthe have more often been used as areas of exploitation in the service of economic development elsewhere in the Netherlands.'
In representations of gas extraction, she also notes that the emphasis is largely on the individual. 'In the media, the focus is often on damage to private property. As a result, relatively little attention is paid to broader consequences for schools, public facilities, the living environment or the region as a whole.'
According to Peeren, these representations also shape which forms of damage become visible and which remain out of the picture. 'That is problematic, because it keeps you stuck in the idea that it is acceptable to damage and exhaust an area as long as compensation is provided. Money cannot solve everything – what was really needed was reflection on damage that is not material.'
According to Van Dam, bringing these studies together shows that the future of gas extraction in Groningen is about much more than the question of how justice can be done to the people of Groningen. 'The book shows how we can understand the situation of people in Groningen as part of a broader discussion about who pays the costs of extracting fossil fuels and who benefits from them. This also highlights the importance of a humanities perspective. Important questions that would otherwise remain at the margins are brought into view by this research. Aftershocks of Extraction demonstrates how much humanities scholars have to contribute to the debate about both the past and the future of the fossil economy.'