As a digital and cultural historian, I have seen quite a number of different places so far, and I would be keen to add more to the list. I am currently a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Limerick on the MALCONTENTS project on social deviancy among early modern German professoriate. For a long time, I have been working on another cultural phenomenon: early modern handwritten newsletters. This is a source type that I have especially studied through digital means, in particular during my time in Florence, Cork, and DC. A lingering interest from my time as a master student in Leiden is the idea of “Italy” in the late fifteenth century, which I continue to explore at times.
That is the brief version of my academic trajectory. A reasonably long time ago, I was born in a town strangely (or appropriately) called “Houses” (Huizen) in the Netherlands. This was also the place where I enjoyed my primary and secondary education. After Highschool, I left my hometown to study History at Leiden University. Rather soon, I decided that I wanted something more, a more thorough way to study history and consequently I decided to enrol for a language study as well. This brought me to the Italian language, which besides for the tremendous amount of literary treasures, offered also an intriguing study object for her atypical path to nation forming.Since I had chosen to study the language, it was of course inevitable that I would also spend some time during my studies in Italy. Therefore, in 2016 I followed a semester at the University of Bologna. Followed by an internship in 2017 at the Royal Dutch Embassy in Rome.
Also from my earliest days in University, I developed an interest in the use of primary sources, following classes in palaeography and the use of archival material. For my BA thesis in History, I visited several archives in search of the ‘renten’ that the cities of the Duchy of Holland made to support the Duke. Later in my studies, I got the opportunity to elaborate this interest in archival material when I got offered a position as student-assistant in a digitalization project called ‘Vincentian Missionaries in Seventeenth-century Europe and Africa.’ This is also where for the first time I was actively engaged in a Digital Humanities project.
Since I had chosen to study the language, it was of course inevitable that I would also spend some time during my studies in Italy. Therefore, in 2016 I followed a semester at the University of Bologna. Followed by an internship in 2017 at the Royal Dutch Embassy in Rome.
In 2018 I finished my ReMA-thesis about Italian identity in the private correspondence between the Este, Sforza and Gonzaga families. Besides this degree, I eventually also hold BA degrees in History and Italian.
Before moving to Florence to pursue my PhD, I had the chance to see the importance of Digital Humanities from a very different perspective. For a year and a half, I worked for Sidestone Press, an academic publisher. They are continuously engaged in improving their services in Open Access publishing.
As my real ambition was to become a man of letters, I decided to pursue a PhD in in Digital History at University College Cork. There, I joined the EURONEWS project. I say ‘there,’ but large parts of the project actually took place in Florence, where our sources were located. Together, we aim to reconstruct the dynamics behind the avvisi, hand-written newsletters that carried information across the world from the sixteenth century. Many of these avvisi were collected by the Medici family and are nowadays preserved within the Florence State Archive. In my dissertation, I tried to describe the dynamics of the handwritten news system through the application of digital tools. I submitted and defended this dissertation in 2023 and formally graduated in 2024.
I continued my work on manuscript newsletters through postdoctoral fellowships at the German Historical Institute, Washington, George Mason University, and the Folger Shakespeare Library. I hope to publish these results soon. Subsequently, I expanded my expertise in German history by joining the MALCONTENTS project at the University of Limerick as a postdoctoral researcher.
