Dr. Martine Veldhuizen

Martine Veldhuizen is a cultural and literary historian at the Department of Languages, Literature and Communication. Before she received a Veni grant in 2016, she was a fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities in Edinburgh and received a Doctor Catharine van Tussenbroek grant to conduct research at the Huntington Library in California. In her book The Sins of the Tongue in the Medieval West (2017), she explores perceptions on ‘wrongful speech, such as blasphemy, gossip and seditious speech. She co-founded the network Free Speech in Europe, 1400-1750 and currently focuses on truth-tellers as characters in the first printed books (1450-1500).

What is the relationship between free speech and the invention of the printing press?

Martine Veldhuizen has been a member of the Utrecht Young Academy, a bridge between young and talented researchers, since 2018.