Cultural History and Religious History Research Group

Research Team - Cultural History and Religious History

• Goals

  We aim to problematize traditional breakpoints, for instance between the Middle ages and Early Modern Times, or between religion and science, politics and emotions, economy and culture. Long-term research of cultural history also challenges us to develop and employ innovative digital research methods.

• Team

  Cultural history and Religious history Staff members
  Professors and academic staff

  • Inger Leemans, professor of Cultural history
  • Fred van Lieburg, professor of Religious history, director HDC
  • George Harinck, professor of History of Neo-Calvinism
  • Ab Flipse, researcher/lecturer – university historian
  • Edwina Hagen, assistant professor 
  • Erika Kuijpers, assistant professor
  • Marianne Ritsema van Eck, assistant professor
  • Lorella Viola, assistant professor 

  Endowed professor

  • Fokko Jan Dijksterhuis, endowed professor of the History of Knowledge 
  • Manon Parry, professor of Medical & Nursing History

  Emeritus Professors

  • Willem Frijhoff emeritus professor of Early-modern History
  • Koen Goudriaan, emeritus professor of Medieval History
  • Gerrit Schutte, emeritus special professor of the History of Dutch Protestantism

• Disciplines

  • Religion - ritual - world view
  • Science - knowledge - education 
  • Emotions - senses - body
  • Politics - biography - leadership
  • Culture - economy - ecology

• Methods

  • Long-term and comparative research
  • Digital Humanities – text, sentiment & concept mining
  • Reconstruction – historical smells, theater performances
  • Cooperation with private & public partners

• PhD Topics

  • Vincent Laarman, Promovendus NWO-project ‘Church and Slavery in the Dutch Empire: History, Theology and Heritage’ (Promotores: G. Harinck & D. Hondius)
  • Stefan Reyes, Cape of Storms: The habitus, ideological clashes and accommodation among Cape slave crew communities from 1780-1806 (Promotores: I. Leemans & E. Kuijpers)
  • Johan Smits, Promovendus Lerarenbeurs (NWO) - Nations and the Life of Mind: Protestant Discourses on the Nation (1820-1870) (Promotores: F. van Lieburg & A. Aubert)
  • Martha Visscher-Houweling, Promovendus Digibron - 'Ontwikkelingen in het orthodox-protestantisme onder de digitale loep' (Promotores: F. van Lieburg & E. Stronks)
  • Joren Reichel, Promovendus Stichting Steunfonds Lutherana. Het Nederlandse lutheranisme in de 19^e eeuw
  • Suzanne Whitby, Senstories: A Sensory, Storied Approach to Revealing, Enlivening, and Sustaining Natural Heritagescapes. (Promotores: I. Leemans & L. Egberts (RCE).
  • Hugo Lauwers, Stadsafkeer. Anti-urbanistische vertogen in de literatuur en kunst van de Lage Landen vanaf 1550 tot nu. (Promotores: I. Leemans & prof.dr. R. Aerts)
  • Ronald van Gelder, Een wijk op palen. Uniek erfgoed in Diemen. (Promotores: I. Leemans & dr. S. Kluiving)

• Projects

  The group has been very successful in attracting research funding from (inter)national scientific organizations, as well as private and public foundations, institutes and companies. Current projects include:

  • Erika Kuijpers lead with Judith Pollmann (Universiteit Leiden) the interdisciplinary project Chronicling novelty. New knowledge in the Netherlands, 1500-1850. This project investigates the circulation and evaluation of new knowledge, ideas and technologies among a non-specialist public of middle-class authors of chronicles in the Netherlands. The project develops computational methods to use them in large numbers and comparatively, so as to track and analyse the circulation, evaluation and acceptance of old and new ideas and information over time and spatially.
  • George Harinck leads the NWO-researchsproject ‘Church and Slavery in the Dutch Empire: History, Theology and Heritage’, together with the Protestantse Theologische Universiteit and the University of Curaçao. This research examines the role in slavery (via VOC and WIC) of, in particular, the Reformed Church in the Republic and of Dutch churches in the nineteenth century, and its repercussions.
  • Fred van Lieburg is, among many other affiliations in the international field of religious history, principal investigator of the Netherlands e-Science Center project Digital Dutch Religion Portal (1500-2000) (DigiDuRe). This endeavor connects big datasets of books (STCN, GGC), religious specialists (pastors, ministers, etc.) and academics (RAN) in a digital infrastructure for research into correlations between religious positions, scholarly education, and the public discourse in the Netherlands and its colonies
  • Inger Leemans was PI of the Horizon2020 project Odeuropa: Negotiating Olfactory and Sensory Experiences in Cultural Heritage Practice and Research. This project develops sensory mining techniques for olfactory heritage. It resulted in two websites – Odeuropa Smell Explorer and Encyclopedia of Smell History and Heritage – and two toolkits: The Olfactory Storytelling Toolkit and Olfactory Heritage Toolkit. The research on olfactory heritage will continue in the NWO-project POEM: Poetics of Olfaction in Earlymodernity.
  • In Embodied Emotions, Leemans and Kuijpers developed a computer model (HEEM) that, on the long term, can trace (bodily) emotional expressions in old Dutch texts (Escience). Other current Digital Humanities projects include: QuPiD² (AAA Data Science) and Visualizing Uncertainty (EScience).

• Connection with education

  Our teaching focuses primarily on the period between 1300 and 1850, but PhD candidates, bachelor’s and (research) master’s students can also approach us for teaching and supervision regarding culture, religion, power, knowledge, emotion, senses and digital methods in modern history. 

• Connection with centers/institutes

  The research group is part of the Network Institute, and is an active member of:

  • ACCESS - Amsterdam Center for Cross-disciplinary Emotion and Sensory Studies
  • HDC Centre for Religious History
  • Stevin Center for the History of Science and Humanities

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