I am a specialist in digital historical research (digital history, digital humanities) and have a passion for Python. My current projects are geared towards the digital analysis of cultural 'memes' (continuously recurring patterns of words and concepts) in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, based on newspapers, periodicals, parliamentary records and other digitized texts. This research is closely connected to the various interrelated fields In which I have worked as a cultural historian, including the history of ideas, religion, media and communication.  In 2022 I was awarded, together with Pim Huijnen, the Richard Deswarte Prize in Digital History.

I was full professor of Cultural History at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (2007-2009) and subsequently full professor of Cultural History at Utrecht University (2009-2019). Between 2013 and 2018 I acted as Head of Department of History and Art History. I am now professor in Digital History on behalf of the Netherlands eScience Center, the Dutch national centre for research software, of which I am general director / CEO.

I am a co-founder and editor of the open-access journal International Journal for History, Culture and Modernity. I am also a member of the steering group of the Research Software Alliance (ReSA).

Students attention please! If you have a feeling for computers and programming, then please feel free to contact me for advice or supervision (thesis, research internships) in digital history.

External recognition: Funding ID

(round numbers in €, only substantial grants obtained in open competition)

• 2018: grant Innovation Fund for IT in Research, for "Historicized Place Name Disambiguation in Multilingual Repositories" (€ 25,000)
• 2016-2017: Dutch National Library / NIAS Fellow for Digital Humanities
• 2017: grant Institutions for Open Societies, Utrecht University, for "Europe from Below: Popular Understandings of Europe in Digital Collections", with Femke van Esch and Melvin Wevers (€ 12,210)
• 2016: grant Digital Humanities Lab, Utrecht, for digital access to English-language newspapers (The Times)
• 2016-2021: grant Professor Van Winter Fonds for PhD research on "Qualitative Darwinism: exploring an evolutionary approach in the history of witchcraft", with Steije T. Hofhuis (€ 204,474)
• 2015-2018: grant Professor Van Winter Fonds for International open acccess Journal for History, Culture and Modernity (www.history-culture-modernity.org) (€ 9,000)
• 2015-2016: grant Netherlands eScience Center (NLeSC): "Mining Shifting Concepts through Time (ShiCo): Word Vector Text Mining Change and Continuity in Conceptual History" (€ 50,000)
• 2015-2016: Museum grant, Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research, in collaboration with Museum Catherijne Convent and the Utrecht Digital Humanities Lab, "Het voorwerp verhaald. Een onderzoek naar de duurzame koppeling van object, verhaal en herinnering" (€ 48,000)
• 2014-2016: grant K.F. Heinfonds "Student trainees for running an interdisciplinary open-access journal in the Humanities" (€ 9,600)
• 2014: grant Netherlands eScience Center (NLeSC): "Facilitating and supporting large-scale text mining in the field of Digital Humanities (Texcavator)" (€ 50,000)
• 2013-2016: HERA grant, HERA programme "Cultural Encounters": 'Asymmetrical encounters: Digital humanities approaches to reference cultures in Europe, 1815–1992' (€ 999.737)
• 2012-2017: Horizon grant, Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research: ‘The Emergence of the United States in Public Discourse in the Netherlands, 1890-1990’ (€ 1.995.475)
• 2012-2015: Subsidy Open Access Journal, Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research: International Journal for History, Culture and Modernity (www.history-culture-modernity.org) (€ 45.000, with an additional grant of € 9.000 to cover author’s fees in 2015-2018)
• 2007-2010 Internationalization grant, Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research: ‘The dynamics of religious reform in church, state and society in Northern Europe, c.1780-c.1920’ (€ 25.000)
• 2003-2005 Research grant, Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences: ‘Professional identity, communication and the social history of knowledge’ (€ 200.000)
• 2000-2003 Research grant, Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences: ‘Communication and history: sermons, religious historiography, press freedom’ (€ 200.000)
• 2000-2003 Research grant, Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (awarded but returned)
• 1997-2000 Research grant, Volkswagen Stiftung: ‘Eighteenth-century Dutch toleration debates’ (€ 100.000)
• 1998-1999 Hendrik Casimir-Karl Ziegler Research Award for the Humanities, Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences/ Nordrhein-Westphälische Akademie der Wissenschaften: ‘Eighteenth-century cultural exchange between Germany and the Netherlands’ (€ 100.000)
• 1994-1997 Research grant, Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research: ‘Willem Bilderdijk, 1756-1831: The intellectual world of a Dutch romantic’ (€ 200.000)
• 1989-1993 Research grant, VU University Amsterdam: ‘Dutch Calvinism and the search for the social centre in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries’ (€ 200.000)