Amsterdam School of Historical Studies

Maartje van Gelder, Associate Professor in Early Modern History, has been appointed as the new director of the Amsterdam School of Historical Studies. From 1 February she will be the successor of Guy Geltner, who will step down from his position due to a move to Monash University. Maartje will share directorial duties with Sofie Remijsen, who remains the vice-director of ASH.

Maartje works on the history of 16th and 17th century Europe and the Mediterranean, with a particular focus on the Venetian Republic and urban and political history. She finished her PhD at the UvA in 2007; her dissertation was published as Trading Places: The Netherlandish Merchant community in Early Modern Venice (2009, Brill). She was a postdoctoral researcher at Leiden in 2008-2009, and has been working at the UvA since then. Maartje was awarded an NWO Veni grant in 2011 and has held visiting appointments at Birkbeck, University of London (2011) and Columbia University, New York (2013) as well as research fellowships at (among others) the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study (2018) and the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton (2019). In the last few years she has published articles in eg. the Journal of Modern History and Journal of Early Modern History, and co-edited volumes on graffiti (Tekens aan de wand: graffiti door de eeuwen heen; special issue Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis in 2018) and Early Modern diplomacy (Cross-Cultural Diplomacy and Diplomatic Intermediaries in the Early Modern Mediterranean, special issue Journal of Early Modern History in 2015).

Mario Damen has been awarded a five month fellowship at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences (NIAS) in 2021. NIAS fellowships are exempt from teaching and management duties, allowing them to concentrate on advanced research projects.

On behalf of Irene Zwiep, we would like to ask you to register your research output in Pure before 31 December 2019. Two helpful tips:

• Please add an attachment/ DOI or link to your publication whenever possible. Records with attachments are validated with priority by the UB and will therefore sooner be accessible in DARE.
   
• The status of publications that are not published yet (in preparation, submitted, accepted/ in press, e-pub ahead of print, unpublished) should remain on "entry in progress". Once it is published you can add the publication details and change the status to "for approval". This way it will not clutter our ASH workflow in Pure, thanks!

Access Pure: https://pure.uva.nl/admin Login with your UvAnetID and password.
 

The Journal of Trust invited Justyna Wubs-Mrozewicz to give them an idea of trust in premodern times and uses for the concept of “language of trust” that could be quite useful in contemporary trust research. It resulted in this article: 'The concept of language of trust and trustworthiness: (Why) history matters'. Read article

Martijn Icks co-edited the Routledge Handbook of Character Assassination and Reputation Management that will be published soon. 

In modern politics as well as in historical times, character attacks abound. Words and images, like symbolic and psychological weapons, have sullied or destroyed numerous reputations. People mobilize significant material and psychological resources to defend themselves against such attacks. How does character assassination "work," and when does it not? Why do many targets fall so easily when they are under character attack? How can one prevent attacks and defend against them?

The Routledge Handbook of Character Assassination and Reputation Management offers the first comprehensive examination of character assassination. Read more

‘The Making of the Humanities’ conference goes to Barcelona! The Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF) together with the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC) will host the 9th Making of the Humanities conference, from 21 till 23 September 2020, at the facilities of the UPF Faculty of Humanities, Ciutadella Campus, Jaume I building. Read more

About the Habsburg Jaw in OVT Radio 1.
 

In Folia about "Amsterdam sloopt".

Against English in the book selection of de Volkskrant.
 

In de Volkskrant about the Algerian election.

On December 1, Gulnaz Sibgatullina joined ASH as a postdoctoral fellow in the ERC Synergy project The European Qur'an. Islamic Scripture in European Culture and Religion 1150-1850. In collaboration with Prof. Gerard Wiegers, she will study the Qur'an translations produced in the Russian Empire in the 18^th-19^th centuries. By examining the Qur'an renderings into the majority (Russian) and the Muslim minority (Tatar) languages, Gulnaz will investigate how these translations shaped the notions of ‘sacred’ and ‘religion’, as well as transformed the understanding of Islam under the Tsars.

Before joining ASH, Gulnaz worked as a researcher and lecturer at Leiden University. There she defended her PhD thesis (2019) on the interplay of Christian and Muslim languages in post-Soviet Russia. Besides the issues of Muslim-Christian relations, the main themes of her work include religious conversion, politics of translation and Western Sufism.

 

David de Boer joined ASH as a postdoctoral researcher working on refugee diplomacy and state-building in the NWO VICI project ‘The Invention of the Refugee in Early Modern Europe’. His main academic interests include refugee politics, diplomatic intervention, humanitarianism, and news media between ca. 1500-1800.

After obtaining his BA and MA in history at Utrecht University, David pursued his PhD at the University of Konstanz and Leiden University (joint doctoral program). He defended his dissertation ‘Religious persecution and transnational compassion in the Dutch vernacular press, 1655-1746’ last November. He was a visiting scholar at UCLA, Harvard University, and the Leibniz Institute of European History in Mainz. Before joining the UvA he lectured at Leiden University and Utrecht University.

During his postdoc, David will investigate how refugees impacted state-building between ca. 1570–1730. He examines state formation as the implementation of ‘normative political principles’ – moral maxims used to attain or maintain a just order in society. The project hypothesizes that religious refugees became active designers of these norms, as they tried to secure their position before and after displacement by pleading with secular and church authorities, other exile communities, and foreign audiences through private correspondence and (public) diplomacy.

 

The Faculty of Humanities at the University of Amsterdam invites applications for two visiting research fellowships in the field of Modern Greek Studies for early- and mid- career scholars who wish to pursue (part of) their research at the University of Amsterdam. For the academic year 2020-2021, 1 fellowship will be offered to an early-career scholar (with a PhD not earlier than 2014) for a period of 10 months, and 1 fellowship will be offered to a more experienced scholar (with a PhD between 2000 and 2014) for a period of 5 months. Deadline is 14 February 2020. Read more

The UvA FGw Aspasia Fund is currently inviting applications for the year 2020. The fund was established as an encouragement for women faculty members, to help them take a next step in their career by strengthening their research profile. To this aim, it facilitates temporary release from teaching duties. We welcome applications from women of diverse backgrounds or who have experienced a break in their career or additional responsibilities (e.g. due to leave and/or care tasks). Women academics on a teaching contract without allocated research time are also invited to apply. Deadline is 31 January 2020. Read more

The UvA Faculty of Humanities offers the funding scheme 'Cutting Edge Research Fund' that fosters (inter)national collaboration aimed at innovative, cutting edge research. The call for proposals for the Cutting Edge Research Fund is open for the academic year 2019-2020. Applications can be submitted until 30 June 2020 (NB: these dates are tentative for the time being).

Applications are invited for two types of grants: 1. Network Grants and 2. Research Fellowships. The Fund was made available by the Sustainable Humanities Programme (Duurzame Geesteswetenschappen). Read more