Dr. Henk van Rinsum

Dr. Henk van Rinsum

Researcher
Social and Behavioural Sciences
Visiting Researcher
Research and Grant Office
h.j.vanrinsum@uu.nl

Henk van Rinsum has been working at the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences since 2001 as head of the research support office and as executive secretary to the Board of the Faculty. He was also secretary of the Graduate School of Social and Behavioural Sciences

Until 2001, he worked at the central level of the university, first at the International Office where he was responsible for university development cooperation and later at the university's research policy department. Through the years of work at the International Office and the many travels to Africa in particular, he has always had a fascination for the 'colonial' past of the university. He has also published on this subject. In 2006 he published Sol Iustitae and the Cape on the history of relations between the University of Utrecht and South Africa.

Recently he published a comprehensive study of the work and influence of the professor of Oriental languages, Adrianus Relandus (1676-1718), The Orient in Utrecht. In 1705, this professor published De Religione Mohammedica, a book about Islam that is still seen today as a turning point in the Western conception of Islam. The publication is open access available at the webite of Brill.

He finalized a publication on the colonial past of Utrecht University. It was presented 30 october in the Aula to the Rector Magnificus.

From 1 april 2021 he works as a research fellow at the Universiteit van Stellenbosch, South Africa, at CREST and the DSI-NRF Centre of Excellence in STI Policy. Together with his colleague prof. Jan Botha from CREST, he works on a book about the institutional history of the University of Stellenbosch from 1919 based on biographies of the recipients of an honorary degree at SUN.