As an Assistant Professor in Dutch Literature it is my job to explore the connections between historical and modern literature from a decolonial perspective, in the broadest sense. For my research, which focuses on seventeenth-century literature from postcolonial and ecocritical perspectives, I received the KNAW Early Career Award 2022. I am committed to the development of a diverse and inclusive curriculum for Dutch Language and Culture and the minor Critical Dutch Studies. With colleagues in my department I have developed new courses about Dutch culture in a global context, and landscape and ecologie in Dutch literature, which should contribute to this aim.
After finishing my PhD at the UvA in 2015, I have worked as a teacher at the universities of Leiden, Utrecht, Nijmegen, Greenwich (London), and Groningen, at departments varying from Comparative Literature, Philosophy, Cultural Studies, and Literary Studies. I have taught courses in creative writing at ArtEZ Arnhem, as well as the international summer school 'Gender and Sexuality in Dutch Literature' for IES Abroad Amsterdam, and 'Art History of the 17th Century' for the Utrecht Summerschool.
Currently, I am a member of the advisory board ‘Poetry and Prose’ for the Dutch Foundation for Literature, and a member of the editorial boards of Spiegel der letteren and De Zeven Provinciën Reeks. Before, I have been a member of the juries for the VSB Poetry Prize (2016) and the Libris Literature Price (2017), and a member of the advisory board ‘Literature and Theatre’ for the Amsterdam Fund for the Arts (2017-2019).
My research focuses on the early modern literary roots of anti-colonialism. It aims to bring marginalised voices to the fore, creating a more balanced understanding of the Dutch colonial past. My current project ‘Literary Unsettlements’ combines methods from Early Modern Literature and Postcolonial Theory to recover voices of dissent in early modern colonial discourse, and to gain insight into present-day cultural representations of the 17th century, such as the 'Golden Age', that have kept these voices hidden from our view. Within this project, my article about Spinozism and colonialism has been awarded the ASCA Article Award 2021. For my original and innovative approach to histroical literature I have received the KNAW Early Career Award 2022.
In December 2022, Gaston Franssen and I published the special issue 'Symbiosis' for Nederlandse letterkunde, about ecocriticism in Dutch literature from the seventeenth century to today. This subject fits my recent research interest at the intersection of colonialism and ecology.
In October 2021, with colleagues from Utrecht and Leiden, I organized the two-day conference ‘Slavery in the Cultural Imagination’. we will soon publish an edited volume on the same topic for Amsterdam University Press.
Currently working on a book publication on 'frank speech' in the work of the Dutch poet Joost van den Vondel. It utilises the Foucauldian notion of parrhesia to demonstrate how Vondel ‘dramatised’ political, theological and artistic conflicts in the Dutch Republic.