Research

Current research projects include:

Jan Willem Veluwenkamp: The study of early modern Frisian shipmaster communities in their regional and national economic contexts: The Ascent of the Frisians. The Dutch Commercial System and the market for maritime transport, 1550-1800 (2PhDs & 1 Postdoc, funded by NWO since 2009: €600.000) This project is linked to the Soundtoll Registers Online (STRO). In close co-operation with Tresoar, the Frisian Historical and Literary Centre, Leeuwarden, we realize an electronic database for the complete Sound Toll Registers (funding since 2008: €1.7m, of which by NWO: €1.2m).

Rina Knoeff: The NWO-funded Vidi-project Vital Matters: Boerhaave’s Chemico-Medical Legacy and Dutch Enlightenment Culture (2012-2017) researches the Vitalist medicine of the Dutch followers of the medical teacher Herman Boerhaave (1 PhD, 1 Postdoc, 1 PI). Marieke Hendriksen’s Postdoc research concerns the Quicksilver Doctors.

Megan Williams: The NWO-funded Veni-project Paper Princes: Paper in the Expansion of European Statecraft researches the relationship between paper production and the rise of early modern diplomacy.

David van der Linden: The NW-funded Veni project Divided by Memory: Coping with Religious Diversity in Post-Civil War France, 1598-1685 investigates how conflicting memories of civil war can undermine confessional coexistence and re-ignite conflict, focusing on Catholic and Protestant memories about the French Wars of Religion (1562-1598)

Raingard Esser: Regional memories and identities in contested border area with a particular emphasis on the border region between the Low Countries and the Holy Roman Empire in the early modern period.

Joop Koopmans: Storehouses of News: Changing Networks, Formats and Functions of Printed Information in the Dutch Republic and Western Europe (1650-1800), with a particular focus on the Dutch news periodical Europische Mercurius.

Marja van Tilburg: Race, Gender, Culture: Creating Identities within Cross-cultural, Historical Contexts (with a particular focus on the age of the Enlightenment).

Anjana Singh: Useful and Reliable Knowledge in Early Modern South Asia, c. 1500-1800: The social history of knowledge, its institutional and anthropocentric organization, creation, circulation, accumulation and growth.

We currently supervise the following PhD projects:

• The Makkum shipmasters community in the 18th century (Jelle Jan Koopmans)
• Forest resources for Iberian Empires: Ecology and Globalization in the Age of Discovery (Germán Jiménez Montes)
• Orangism in the Netherlands 1780-1813 (Laurien Hansma)
• The Grand Pensionary Simon van Slingelandt (1664-1727) (Arend van Essen)
• Simon Oomius and his Orangist Bazuinen (1672-1674) (Theo Basoki, in cooperation with University of Kampen)
• Blood, Sweat and Tears – about the Boerhaavian physiology of the fluids (Ruben Verwaal)
• To Proclaim, to instruct and to Discipline. The Visuality of Texts in Calvinist Churches in the Dutch Republic (Jacolien Wubs)

Completed PhD theses

• On 12 October 2017 Simone Steenbeek obtained her PhD with The Frisian shipmasters in the Baltic trade and the Dutch market for maritime transport (1550-1800)
• On 5 December 2016 Fernando Mártinez Luna obtaied his PhD with The image of Spain and the Spanish people in the Netherlands (1566-1609)
• On 12 September 2013 Judith Brouwer obtained her PhD with Signs of life: Captured letters in the Year of Disaster 1672 (co-supervisor: Joop Koopmans)