dr. Erika Kuijpers

Associate Professor, Faculty of Humanities, Art and Culture, History, Antiquity

Associate Professor, CLUE+

Associate Professor, Network Institute

Personal information

Erika Kuijpers teaches early modern history of the Netherlands. She is director of the Master Programme History and coordinates the Minor Digital Humanities and Social Analytics.

Her research focusses on the cultural and social history of memory, emotions, religion, orality and the practice of chronicling in Early Modern Europe 1500-1800.

Erika is a member of the editorial board of popular historical magazine Geschiedenis Magazine and regularly speaks for a variety of audiences.

Besides teaching and research:

Co-director of ACCESS, the Amsterdam Centre for Cross-Disciplinary Emotions and Sensory Studies
Member of the Programme Team of the Huizinga Institute, the Dutch National Research School for Cultural History
Board member of the Flemish-Dutch Society for Early Modern History (VNVNG)

Research

Chronicling novelty. New knowledge in the Netherlands, 1500-1850

Erika Kuijpers collaborates with Judith Pollmann (Leiden University) on a research project focussing on the circulation and reception of new knowledge, ideas and technologies among middle class writers of local chronicles between 1500 and 1850.

This interdisciplinary project has been awarded a NWO Vrije Competitie grant for the period 2018-2023. The research proposal can be found here.

Previous work:

Erika Kuijpers started her career as a social historian of migration. In 2005 she defended her doctoral thesis on migrants and social relations in 17th century Amsterdam (Utrecht University, 2005). Between 2005 and 2008 she has been working on the history of labourmarkets and labour relations.

From 2008-2013 she worked at Leiden University on personal memories and traumatic experiences of the Dutch Revolt in the context of the research project ‘Tales of the revolt: memory, oblivion and identity in the Low Countries, 1566 – 1700’.

At VU she participates in projects that explore computational methods for the semantic mining of early modern texts: e.g. ‘Embodied Emotions: Mapping Bodily Expression of Emotions from a Historical Perspective’.

Teaching

Since 2015 at VU:

Ba1 History academic skills
Ba1 History Euroe and the World: Middle Ages - Early Modern
Ba3 Debating the Middle Ages (Minor European History and Culture 1200-1800)
Ba3 Urban History (Minor European History and Culture 1200-1800)
Ba3 History of Emotions 1500-1800 (Minor European History and Culture 1200-1800)
Ba2 History What’s e-humanities?
Ba2 History Vluchtelingen 1200-1800
Ba3 Visualizing the Humanities (Minor Digital Humanities and Social Analytics)
Ba2 History Archivistiek en Paleografie
Ba3 History Research seminar Cultuur, Religie, Kennisgeschiedenis
Ma History From Source to Public
Ma Thesis Colloquium
Thesis supervison (Ba & Ma)
Coordinator minor Digital Humanities and Social Analytics