Education in livestock diseases in the tropics at the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine of Utrecht University started in 1915 at the Institute for Parasitic and Infectious Diseases. Subsequently, the Institute for Tropical and Protozoon Diseases was established in 1948 and here students and veterinarians were trained in tropical animal health. Research and training were mainly focused on African livestock diseases such as tick borne diseases and trypanosomosis. Training possibilities for students included an elective course (‘Tropencursus’), membership of a debating club (‘Tropische Kring’), and a traineeship in a project in a tropical country. From 1987 onwards training, education, research, and management of international collaborative projects in tropical animal health became the shared responsibility of the Department of Infectious Diseases and Immunology and the Office for International Cooperation. This article focuses on the last 50 years and highlights activities such as education, research, newsletters, networks, and projects with African and Asian countries.

Jan Broek grew up in the Netherlands and took his undergraduate and graduate work at the University of Utrecht. He completed his doctorate following extended travel and research in the United States. After a few years working in the Netherlands, he returned to America, spending most of his academic life in geography at the University of California at Berkeley (1936–46) and at the University of Minnesota (1948–70) , with a short period back at the University of Utrecht (1946–8) . Broek contributed substantially to human, historical and regional geography through his monograph on the Santa Clara valley in California, in several publications on Southeast Asia, in writings about geographic thought, and in works intended for students. Also, and perhaps as importantly, he led the development and expansion of the graduate programme at Minnesota to a position of eminence in world geography.

Peter Hall’s analysis of the Dutch Randstad, in his The World Cities (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1966), generated the archetype of the polycentric urban region (PUR). Although influential, Hall primarily amplified 1950s’ Dutch planning discourse. This paper analyses the PUR’s genesis, discussing the economic modernization of the 1950s and the preceding decades of crisis and war. By temporalizing Gieryn’s truth-spot theory, the paper constructs a prehistory of the PUR through the biographical trajectories of Dutch geography and planning pioneers Louis van Vuuren, Willem Steigenga, Christiaan van Paassen and Gerrit Jan van den Berg. Planning the PUR is recast as a gentle modernization strategy, signalling new interpretations of polycentricity’s contemporary utility.