Inger Leemans is Professor of Cultural History at the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities of Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and PI of NL-Lab, a research group on Dutch Culture and Identity at the Humanities Cluster of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW).
Her research focusses on early modern cultural history, the history of emotions and the senses, cultural economy, history of knowledge and digital humanities. She has published about the history of pornography, (radical) Enlightenment, cultural infrastructure, stock markets and financial crises. Her text book on eighteenth-century literature Worm en donder. Geschiedenis van de Nederlandse literatuur 1700-1800 (co-author Gert-Jan Johannes) was hailed in the press as ‘a masterpiece’. Often, her research triggers media attention, see e.g. the Financiële Dagblad about her inaugural lecture in 2011, journal Elsevier about her research on embodied emotions, NRC about Digital Humanities, Trouwon wind trade and speculation, and her TedX Talkon ‘Making Sense of Finance’.
Inger Leemans was the coordinator of the Odeuropa project, olfactory heritage and sensory mining, She furthermore coordinated projects on the cultural history of finance, on early modern visual culture and the culture of violence, and collaborated in various digital humanities projects (e.g. Clariah+, Golden Agents). For the Global Knowledge Society project, Leemans coordinated the working group Knowledge and the Market, resulting in the.volume Early Modern Knowledge Societies as Affective Economies: Knowledge – Market – Affect (Routledge).
Inger Leemans is a member of the Royal Netherands Society of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) and the Koninklijke Hollandse Maatschappij der Wetenschappen. She is a board member the American Historical Review, the Dutch National Research Council for Cultural Heritage (NOE), the National Graduate School for Cultural History Huizinga Institute, the Thijssen-Schoute Stichting, , and of the Raad voor Geesteswetenschappen (KNAW Council for the Humanities). As chair of the Humanities Committee for Nationale Commissie Sectorplannen, Leemans advises the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science (OCW). Leemans is a Trust Person (vertrouwenspersoon) for the VU Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities.
Office hours: Tuesday
