Dr. Andrea van Leerdam

Information / Collection Specialist 
Universiteitsbibliotheek Uithof
Heidelberglaan 3
3584 CS Utrecht

Dr. Andrea van Leerdam

Curator
Special collections
Information / Collection Specialist
Education support
+31 6 39 586 850
a.e.vanleerdam@uu.nl

Dr. Andrea van Leerdam is curator of printed works at the Special Collections of Utrecht University Library (as of 1 September 2023). As a book historian, she has a special interest in early modern visual culture and reading practices, and in digital humanities approaches of print culture.

In 2022-2023 she worked as a postdoc researcher in the project European Dimensions of Popular Print Culture, led by Dr. Jeroen Salman. Together with the Digital Humanities Lab, a virtual research environment is being developed that makes it possible to analyse metadata and selected full texts and images of early modern popular print from various collections.

Andrea is Co-Chair of the Dutch book historical society (Nederlandse Boekhistorische Vereniging, NBV).

On 21 October 2022, Andrea successfully defended her PhD dissertation Woodcuts as reading guides: How images shaped knowledge transmission in medical-astrological books in Dutch (1500-1550). A revised version is set to be published by Amsterdam University Press, in the series Bijdragen tot de Geschiedenis van de Nederlandse Boekhandel.

In 2022 Andrea received a fellowship from the Tiele-stichting for research into the international tradition of so-called Calendars of Shepherds. These books were among the bestsellers in the late 15th and 16th centuries, providing popular knowledge about health, nature, and the cosmos. This research will result in a peer-reviewed article.

Between 2007 and 2016, Andrea worked as a news editor and external communications advisor at the Communications & Marketing department of the Faculty of Humanities. In 2021-2022 she took up this role again for a few months as a temporary replacement.