Since 2006, Columbia has invited a specialist in the culture and history of Dutch-speaking society to teach a course of his or her own design and to organize a series of lectures or a workshop open to the academic community and, if appropriate, the general public on themes related to the scholar’s own specialty. The visitor is provided institutional support by Columbia and direct expenses are covered by a grant from the Nederlandse Taalunie. The following distinguished visitors have held the position of Queen Wilhelmina Visiting Professor:
Spring 2007
Walter Prevenier
Professor Emeritus, University of Ghent
Walter Prevenier is a Flemish historian specializing in the history of the Middle Ages, diplomatics and palaeography. Until 1999 he was a professor at the University of Ghent, where he taught historical criticism among other courses. He has been a guest professor at many universities worldwide, including University of Pennsylvania, Rutgers University, and University of California, Berkeley as well as Columbia. He is also a member of the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences (Department of Literature) in Amsterdam. His research interests include, but are not limited to, the social history of the Low Countries during the Late Middle Ages; medieval marriage and family; crime in medieval cities; the problem of decoding the texts of medieval courts, judges and other contemporaries; and the role and impact of social and political networks.
Fall 2007
Harold Cook
John F. Nickoll Professor of History, Brown University
Harold Cook is John F. Nickoll Professor of History at Brown University. He previously taught at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Harvard University and from 2000 to 2010 served as Professor of the History of Medicine and Director of the Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at University College London. He has a general interest in the history of medicine and related subjects, and in the early modern period, while his research has been mostly on the 17th century, in recent years focusing on the relationships between commerce, medicine and science in the Dutch Golden Age. He has held several fellowships and has been the recipient of a number of honors and awards, including two book prizes: the Welch Medal of the American Association for the History of Medicine (1997) and the Pfizer Prize of the History of Science Society (2009).
Fall 2008
Francois Verster
Independent Documentary Filmmaker
Francois Verster is a South African film director and documentarian. He has a wide background in writing, music, academia and film. After completing an MA degree with distinction at the University of Cape Town, he worked with Barenholtz Productions in New York and as crew member on various independent features. Verster’s acclaimed debut as documentary director/producer was Pavement Aristocrats: The Bergies of Cape Town. In 1998 he formed Undercurrent Film & Television, a Cape Town-based company that aims to produce quality documentary programs for local as well as international markets.
Spring 2010
Joint appointment:
Marjolein ‘t Hart, Senior Researcher, Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences
C.A. (Karel) Davids, Professor of History, Free University of Amsterdam
Marjolein ‘t Hart is a Senior Researcher in the Huygens Institute of the History of the Netherlands at the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. She was previously Associate Professor of History at the University of Amsterdam. In 1989 she obtained her PhD degree in History at the University of Leiden with a thesis on the rise of the fiscal-military state of the Netherlands in the seventeenth century, supervised by Prof. Charles Tilly (New York) and Prof. Wim Blockmans (Leiden). She has been a Visiting Scholar at Trinity College Dublin, a Fellow of the New School for Social Research at New York, and a Fellow of the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies in Wassenaar. She co-edited A Financial History of the Netherlands (Cambridge University Press, 2010) with Joost Jonker and Jan Luiten van Zanden. Recently, she joined the Executive Committee of the International Economic History Association.
C.A. (Karel) Davids is Professor of Economic and Social History at the Free University of Amsterdam. His research interests include global history; maritime history; history of technology, history of relations between humans and animals, c. 1500 – present. His most recent publication is, Religion, technology and the Great and the Little Divergences: China and Europe compared, c.700-1800 (Brill, Leiden 2012). He is a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Spring 2011
Walter Prevenier
Professor Emeritus, University of Ghent
Walter Prevenier is a Flemish historian specializing in the history of the Middle Ages, diplomatics and palaeography. Until 1999 he was a professor at the University of Ghent, where he taught historical criticism among other courses. He has been a guest professor at many universities worldwide, including University of Pennsylvania, Rutgers University, and University of California, Berkeley as well as Columbia. He is also a member of the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences (Department of Literature) in Amsterdam. His research interests include, but are not limited to, the social history of the Low Countries during the Late Middle Ages; medieval marriage and family; crime in medieval cities; the problem of decoding the texts of medieval courts, judges and other contemporaries; and the role and impact of social and political networks.
Fall 2011
Wim Blockmans
Professor Emeritus, University of Leiden and Emeritus Rector, Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study
Wim Blockmans is Professor Emeritus of Medieval History at Leiden University. His research interests include medieval history; political, economic, social and cultural aspects of Flanders, Holland and other territories in the Low Countries in the 13th to the 16th century; and state formation in late medieval and early modern Europe. He is a member of the British Academy, the Royal Historical Society, Academia Europaea, Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a foreign member of The Royal Academies for Science and the Arts of Belgium.
Spring 2013
Peter Romijn
Professor of History, University of Amsterdam and Director of Research, Netherlands Institute for War, Holocaust, and Genocide Studies
Peter Romijn has been the Director of Research at the Netherlands Institute for War, Holocaust, and Genocide Studies since 1996. In 2002 he was appointed to Professor of Twentieth-century History at the University of Amsterdam. He has written on the politics of occupation and regime transition in the Netherlands and Europe in the Second World War, on the persecution of Jews in the Netherlands and was co-responsible (with Hans Blom) for the report commissioned by the Dutch Government on the ‘safe area’ of Srebrenica (1995).
Fall 2013
Joint appointment:
Maartje van Gelder, Lecturer in Early Modern History, University of Amsterdam
Michiel van Groesen, Lecturer in Early Modern History, University of Amsterdam
Maartje van Gelder is Lecturer in Early Modern History at the University of Amsterdam. After studying history at the University of Amsterdam and the Università di Ca’ Foscari di Venezia, she wrote a PhD dissertation on the role of the community of Dutch and Flemish merchants in early modern Venice. Her book, Trading places: The Netherlandish merchants in early modern Venice, was published with Brill in 2009. Her research interests include the Dutch in the Mediterranean world; the role of converts to Islam in early modern diplomacy; urban history; and Italian (popular) politics.
Michiel van Groesen is Lecturer in Early Modern History at the University of Amsterdam. He studied History and Dutch Renaissance Literature in Groningen and at University College London. His research interests include Atlantic history, early modern news culture, travel literature, and the history of the (illustrated) book. He is the author of Representations of the Overseas World in the De Bry Collection of Voyages (Leiden: Brill, 2008) and editor of The Legacy of Dutch Brazil (Cambridge University Press; forthcoming). Currently he is completing a monograph on news and public opinion on Dutch Brazil in the Dutch Golden Age.
Fall 2014
Joint appointment:
Alexander Rinnooy Kan, Professor of Economics and Business, University of Amsterdam
Paul Schnabel, Distinguished Professor of Sociology, Utrecht University
Alexander Rinnooy Kan (1949) studied mathematics in Leiden and econometrics in Amsterdam. He has held academic positions at a number of universities including Delft University of Technology and Erasmus University Rotterdam. At Erasmus University Rotterdam, he was appointed professor of Operational Research in 1980, before becoming director of the Econometrics Institute in 1983, and Rector Magnificus in 1986. From 1991-1996, Rinnooy Kan was president of the Confederation of Netherlands Industry (VNO) and, after a merger with the Netherlands Christian Workers Union (NCW), the Confederation of Netherlands Industry and Employers (VNO-NCW). He joined the executive board of bank and insurer ING, where he remained a member until June 2006. From 2006 until 2012, he was a Crown-appointed member and chairman of the Social and Economic Council of the Netherlands.
Professor Paul Schnabel was from 1998 – 2013 general director of the Netherlands Institute for Social Research/SCP and advisor to the Dutch cabinet. Earlier appointments include dean of the Netherlands School of Public Health and research director of the Netherlands Institute of Mental Health and Addiction. In 1986 he was appointed professor of clinical psychology and mental health at Utrecht University and in 2002 distinguished professor. At present his scientific interest focuses on welfare state issues in the Netherlands and Europe (social security, health, education, labour relations), modern conservatism in politics and social and cultural history of the Netherlands.