• dr. M.P. (Marijn) Schraagen

• Sarah Bro Trasmundi — University of Southern Denmark

In a situation of declining biodiversity and irreversible environmental change, understanding and preserving botanical life is crucial. We are confronted with the phenomenon of 'shifting baseline syndrome', where successive generations lose sight of past biodiversity richness, basing their perceptions of nature’s wealth on progressively impoverished baselines. These 'forgotten' baselines, reflecting vibrant ecosystems, are chronicled in centuries-old botanical documentation.

The recent digitization of the Flora Batava emerges as a significant tool to reconnect with historical biodiversity records and reinstate a more complete and historically-informed understanding of nature's abundance. The project seeks to explore the intertwined evolution of botany and society, casting light on societal trends like women’s role in botany, evolving sentiments towards plants, and the impact of events like land clearance. Zie:  https://historical-citizen-botany.github.io/website/index.html

• Folgert Karsdorp

Dutch students (4-18) increasingly have trouble understanding what they read - causing them problems as adult citizens. Moreover, the gap between good and poor readers widens. This project investigates how this can be improved by simultaneously strengthening reading comprehension and reading behavior in the world of digital media and applications. A broad group of scientific experts and stakeholders in the field jointly develop a model and infrastructure for designing and testing forms of education aimed at helping teachers and students - especially students with reading delays or difficulties. We implement the results in schools, methods, teacher-training and policy.

http://LeesEvolutie.nl

• Brechtje van Zeijts

With Henk Aarts and Hans Marien (both Social and Behavioural Sciences), and Mehdi Dastani and Marijn Schraagen (Information and Computing Sciences); the aim of this project is to design and develop AI tools for detecting and preventing low literacy in Dutch children, and for providing adequate and personalized support for improving literacy (with the Foundation for Open Speech Technology, Fontys University of Applied Sciences, Royal Library, Stichting Lezen, and other potential partners.

• dr. M.P. (Marijn) Schraagen
• prof. dr. M.M. (Mehdi) Dastani
• dr. Hans Marien
• prof. dr. Henk Aarts

Samen met de Universiteiten van Antwerpen en Nijmegen wordt een onderwijsnetwerk opgericht dat tot doel heeft met middelbare schooldocenten een Olympiade Nederlands te organiseren voor alle leerlingen tussen 15 - 18 jaar in Nederland en Vlaanderen. Zie: https://www.olympiadenederlands.org/

• Kevin Absillis; Valerie Rousseau (Universiteit Antwerpen); Marc van Oostendorp (Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen)

The Dutch Golden Age’s paintings, books, ceramics etc. still fascinate millions of people, but how did these creative outbursts merge? In the Golden Agents Research Infrastructure, so-called computer agents ingeniously connect existing and new databases to facilitate interdisciplinary research that unravels the inner dynamics of this creative miracle.

The aim of this infrastructure project is to create the first set of deep neural language models pre-trained on historical textual material (Dutch and English) from different time periods. This semantic encoding infrastructure, or ‘MacBERTh’ , will serve as an invaluable SSH research tool that enables new ways of analysing historical text: by making the underlying meaning of words, phrases and abstract sentence patterns accessible, searchable, and analysable in a bottom-up, data-driven way, the offered infrastructure will allow researchers from the present to uncover and draw connections between concepts and ideas from the past.
The technology underlying this infrastructure is based on a crucial insight from distributional semantics, which states that the linguistic context in which words and phrases appear provides a good approximation of their meaning. Based on this idea, a number of powerful computational models have been developed to create detailed, compressed linguistic representations when trained on large bodies of text. These representations have already proven to be crucial in addressing various challenges in computational linguistics (NLP/NLU) and related disciplines. Yet, these models have not yet been exploited to study meaning representation in historical language. This gap will be filled by ‘MacBERTh’

• dr. Lieke Stelling

• dr. Lauren Fonteyn (Universiteit Leiden
• main applicant)

Het ministerie van OCW kende Micha Hamel, Johan Sonnenschein en Els Stronks een subsidie toe om met docenten Nederlands, de leerlingbelangenvereniging voorgezet speciaal onderwijs (LBVSO) en medewerkers van de Stichting Leerplan Ontwikkeling (SLO) het komende jaar SchrijfLab.nl (http://schrijflab.nl) uit te bouwen met schrijfonderwijs voor het Voortgezet Special Onderwijs (vso), cluster 4.

Dat betekent dat we schrijfonderwijs gaan ontwerpen en testen dat rekening houdt met neurodivergentie (bijvoorbeeld leerlingen met ASS, autismespectrumstoornissen en ADHD). Hoewel de huidige vso-methoden –  voor praktijkonderwijs, BBL, KBL, GL, TL, havo, vwo –  in verschillende mate wel aandacht schenken aan schrijfonderwijs, hebben ze niet wat SchrijfLab.nl aan het vo-onderwijs beoogt te brengen: schrijfonderwijs geïnspireerd op leesonderwijs en kunstonderwijs dat leerlingen helpt hun gedachten en gevoelens beter, verfijnder en gloedvoller te uiten. Juist voor leerlingen die extra ondersteuning in het leven nodig hebben, kan schrijfonderwijs essentieel zijn. 

We zien dit schrijfonderwijs als belangrijke stap in de richting van een perspectiefwisseling die is bepleit door de LKCA (Landelijk Kennisinstituut Cultuureducatie en Amateurkunst): we moeten als het om vso gaat, de stap maken van een medisch naar sociaal perspectief. Het uitgangspunt van het medische model is dat een beperking een medisch probleem is van een individu dat in essentie gecorrigeerd, hersteld, of genezen dient te worden. Het sociale model verlegt de focus: het gaat niet langer om een geest of lichaam dat gecorrigeerd dient te worden, maar om de wijze waarop de maatschappij mensen actief binnen- of buitensluit van deelname. Willen we een inclusief systeem, dan past de leerling zich niet aan het cultuureducatieve systeem aan (medisch model), maar past 

het systeem zich actief aan de leerling aan. Hoe, dat gaan we het komende  jaar in een aantal ontwerp- en testcycli met leerlingen en docenten onderzoeken. 

• dr. Johan Sonnenschein

• Micha Hamel

In this project we will organize forms of shared reading within the Utrecht University, and monitor and evaluate their effectiveness, specifically with regards to (1) inclusion, (2) belonging to UU community, and (3) reading motivation. We will conduct (online/app) surveys, participant observation and qualitative interviews. Project leader; dr. Agnes Andeweg. project website: http://www.uu.nl/onebook, en https://youtu.be/j5IfBZk_gKE

• prof. mr. dr. Hanneke van Eijken
• dr. Antonie Knigge
• dr. Agnes Andeweg
• dr. Carlijn Kamphuis

We maken 4 online masterclasses met taalbazen (acteur, journalist, schrijver, dichter) en onderzoeken na publicati evan die masterclassen het effect van talige rolmodellen voor jongeren tussen 12 en 18: http://taalbaas.nu

• Roy van Kessel (Sugar Rush Film); Roos Smetsers (Scholieren.com); Gerlien van Dalen (Stichting Lezen/Leescoalitie); Micha Hamel

Het door OCW gesubsidieerde project SchrijfLab.nl wordt gecoördineerd door dichter /onderzoeker Micha Hamel en prof. dr. Els Stronks. Met behulp van OCW-subsidie werken zij tussen 2020-2023 aan de uitbouw van de bestaande site voor online schrijfonderwijs (http://schrijfakademie.nl), met hulp van alle universitaire opleidingen Nederlandse taal en cultuur, docenten in het voortgezet onderwijs, schrijfdocenten, schrijvers, uitgeverijen en schrijversorganisaties. Zie: http://schrijflab.nl

In de zomer van 2020 koppelen we schrijvers, dichters, journalisten, acteurs en jongeren tussen de 12-18 online aan elkaar, om te zien of sessies met de 'taalbazen' de jongeren vooruit helpen met lezen, schrijven en spreken van Nederlands.

• Leescoalitie
• De Schrijverscentrale
• De Schoolschrijver

CLARIAH PLUS, het Common Lab Research Infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities ontwikkelt een nationale digitale onderzoeksinfrastructuur ten behoeve van de geesteswetenschappen en sociale wetenschappen. CLARIAH PLUS richt zich met name op  infrastructuur voor disciplines die teksten op de inhoud bestuderen (zoals letterkunde, geschiedenis, maar ook filosofie en theologie).  

• prof. dr. Jan Odijk

• Karina van Dalen-Oskam
• Inger Leemans
• Piek Vossen

Dit project beoogt duurzame expertise-ontwikkeling tussen de Universiteit Utrecht/Antwerpen, de Stichting Leerplan Ontwikkeling en het Meertens Instituut als kennisinstellingen en Dyzlofilm. We zoeken innovatie in valorisatie door een ontwerp te maken én testen voor een mini-documentaire over wetenschappelijk onderzoek naar het auteurschap van het "Wilhelmus".

Het ontwerp van de mini-documentaire moet zodanig zijn dat het middelbare scholieren engageert met het "Wilhelmus” als vitaal Nederlands erfgoed. In politieke discussies speelt het "Wilhelmus" momenteel een grote rol: het is symbool van voor jongeren verplichte kennis over de Nederlandse natie. Het ontwerp van de mini-documentaire moet inzichtelijk maken dat 1) wetenschap steeds nieuwe kennis produceert en toetst, en 2) nationalisme al eeuwenlang een weerbarstiger iets is.

Het ontwerp maken we in een workshop waarin we recente, middels state-of-the-art computationele technieken verworven inzichten over de auteur van het "Wilhelmus" aan een stresstest onderwerpen. Een interdisciplinaire groep van computerlinguïsten, (kerk)historici, letterkundigen verbindt hun data, en toetst de hypothese dat de Vlaamse predikant Datheen de auteur van het ‘Wilhelmus’ was. Als dat klopt, schreef een Vlaming het Nederlandse volkslied, nabij de Duitse stad Heidelberg, op een Franse melodie. Dit is voer voor discussies over burgerschap in de klas. Dyzlofilm, SLO en docenten dragen aan het ontwerp bij door te onderzoeken hoe wetenschappelijke waarheidsvinding te verbeelden en klassikale discussies over nationalisme te voeden met creatief mediagebruik.

Vervolgens testen we het ontwerp, en vergroten zodoende als samenwerkingspartners onze expertise over innovatieve valorisatie, om die in de toekomst nog verder uit te bouwen. Zie https://howtowilhelmus.nl/

• Folgert Karsdorp
• Martine de Bruin (Meertens Instituut)
• Dylan en Lazlo Tonk (Dyzlofilm)
• Gerdineke van Silfhout (SLO)

We recently developed LitLab: a digital lab for research into Dutch literature for secondary school students. From tests we learned that the impact of LitLab is accelerated by a short introduction of the lab. This project therefore aims to produce De stille kracht: a short animation/video that invites and facilitates secondary school students to become a literary scholar. We involve young LitLab-users and their teachers in producing De stille kracht. In their enthusiasm they will reach out to their peers, and they will teach us researchers how our academic results are best flexed to suit the needs of young scholars-to-be.

• Lazlo en Dylan Tonk (Dyzlo film)
• Gerdineke van Silfhout (Stichting Leerplan Ontwikkeling)
• Wendela de Raat (Leidsche Rijn College)

LitLab is een digitaal laboratorium voor literatuuronderwijs op middelbare scholen, http://litlab.nl. Het bevat momenteel 'proeven' (lessen) en een handleiding voor het schrijven van profielwerkstukken over Nederlandse literatuur. In aanbouw is materiaal voor leesclubs, en proeven die voor de internationale neerlandistiek interessant zijn. Zie: http://litlab.nl

• Iris van Erve (directeur Internationale Vereniging voor Neerlandistiek)
• Gerdineke van Silfhout (Stichting Leerplan Ontwikkeling)
• Mathijs Sanders (Universiteit Groningen)

Met deze NWO KIEM-aanvraag (Creatieve Industrie – Kennis Innovatie Mapping) gaan Louis Grijp, Camerata Trajectina, Els Stronks en de muziekdistributiemaatschappij New Arts International  alle 900 opnamen van middelnederlandse en vroegmoderne liederen die Camerata Trajectina de afgelopen veertig jaar maakte koppelen aan de Liederenbank.

De markt voor de cd’s – waarop de opnames oorspronkelijk zijn verschenen – is aan het krimpen. In de drukbezochte Liederenbank (www.liederenbank.nl) kunnen de nog steeds waardevolle opnames worden afgespeeld, aangeschaft en voor een nieuw publiek ontsloten worden. Middelbare scholieren kunnen de Liederenbank bijvoorbeeld gebruiken als er werkstukken moeten worden geschreven: Camerata's herinterpretaties van liederen over de
Tachtigjarige Oorlog, de VOC, van Bredero en Hooft, enz. lenen zich uitstekend voor educatieve doeleinden, en de koppeling met de muziekopnames zal gebruikt worden om die educatieve functie te versterken.

Op zondagmiddag 30 november zal het resultaat worden gepresenteerd tijdens het jubileumconcert van Camerata Trajectina in de Utrechtse Geertekerk. Tevens komt er een bijeenkomst voor andere muziekgroepen en -maatschappijen om te zien of het model van koppeling van muziekopnamen aan onderzoeksdatabases verder kan worden uitgebouwd en toegepast.

 

Modern research into Dutch literary culture of the past and the present requires a transnational approach. CODL (2012-2015) will help to create favourable conditions for this approach. The pilot Beatrijs Internationaal (2009-2011) has created a dynamics of cooperation and exchange in the increasingly international field of Dutch Studies. With a new project we want to seize this momentum in order to set up a large scale European research project, to be executed within an international research network. This new project will deal with the question how literary texts from a relatively small language area, such as that of Dutch, circulate internationally in different periods. At the same time it will look at the possibilities and difficulties of research on international cultural transfer.

A number of participants will be involved in CODL on an individual or institutional basis, many of whom have taken actively part in Beatrijs Internationaal. I am one of the participants in the Netherlands.

• projectleiders: Dr. O. Réthelyi (Eötvös Loránd Universiteit
• Budapest)
• Dr. T. van Kalmthout (HuygensING) and prof. dr. E. Brems (HUB
• KULeuven)

This workshop explores the dynamics between the production of national literatures and the globalizing of cultures and identities. Our aim is to make an important new contribution to a rapidly growing field by opting for a longitudinal approach (presenting Dutch-language literature as a case study. The national literature of the Netherlands but also the literature written by Dutch-speaking authors in Belgium, Suriname and (up to the early 20 century) South Africa is not particularly well known internationally, but selected authors are. Some of them owe their success mainly to extra-literary circumstances (e.g. Ruusbroec, Van Gogh, Anne Frank, Hirsi Ali), others to the efforts and impact of powerful intermediary countries and institutions (e.g. Nooteboom's international success through Germany) or to the fact that they wrote in the international linga franca of their time (Grotius, Spinoza). What are the challenges and opportunities facing writers from a minor literature on the international field? Selected papers will appear in a special issue of the Open Access Journal of Dutch Literature.

• prof. dr. Geert Buelens

• prof. dr. Thomas Vaessens (UvA)

In the Early-Modern period images and texts were thought of as closely related. In books, paintings
and buildings they were often used jointly in an effort to talk both to the mind and to the senses. A prime example of this bimedial culture is the emblem book. Research of the intertwining of visual and textual traditions in the emblem has profited immensely from digitization efforts, for digital editions facilitate complex searches in large corpora of emblems. The Emblem Project Utrecht (EPU) digitized Dutch emblems books, and other corpora were published by groups elsewhere in Europe and the US. In a community effort coordinated in the Open Emblem Group, an exchange format has been designed to facilitate the aggregation of material from individual projects. EMIT-X will implement this exchange format in an OAI data provider, facilitating sharing and re-use of the EPU data and preparing the way for related projects elsewhere. In the Early-Modern period images and texts were thought of as closely related. In books, paintings
and buildings they were often used jointly in an effort to talk both to the mind and to the senses. A prime example of this bimedial culture is the emblem book. Research of the intertwining of visual and textual traditions in the emblem has profited immensely from digitization efforts, for digital editions facilitate complex searches in large corpora of emblems. The Emblem Project Utrecht (EPU) digitized Dutch emblems books, and other corpora were published by groups elsewhere in Europe and the US. In a community effort coordinated in the Open Emblem Group, an exchange format has been designed to facilitate the aggregation of material from individual projects. EMIT-X will implement this exchange format in an OAI data provider, facilitating sharing and re-use of the EPU data and preparing the way for related projects elsewhere.

• Peter Boot (HuygensING)

Deze Wetenschappelijke Onderzoeksgemeenschap van historisch letterkundigen onder de neerlandici in Nederland en Vlaanderen heeft als doelstelling: (1) het leggen van de grondslagen voor een onderzoek naar verschillende aspecten van de voorgeschiedenis van het moderne literatuurconcept (12e-18e eeuw), (2) op grond van deze bevindingen een aantal centrale vooronderstellingen ter discussie stellen die het literatuurhistorisch onderzoek in de Lage Landen traditioneel hebben gestuurd, met het oog op een verdere uitwerking in vervolgonderzoek en (3) het faciliteren van onderzoekssamenwerking tussen verschillende groepen literatuurhistorici die elkaar in de klassieke onderzoeksstructuren maar zelden ontmoeten, daarbij inbegrepen het creëren van nieuwe internationale onderzoeksverbanden.

• prof. dr. Paul Wackers
• prof. dr. Bart Besamusca
• dr. Dieuwke van der Poel

• Projectleider: Jürgen Pieters (Universiteit Gent)
• en neerlandici aan universiteiten in Louvain-la-Neuve
• Antwerpen
• Leuven
• Leiden en Nijmegen

This collaborative project offers a virtual research environment (www.annotatedbooksonline.com) and publication platform for a young and growing field in cultural history: the study of early modern reading practices. Partners are Paul Dijstelberge (Amsterdam), Arnthony Grafton (Princeton), Lisa Jardine, Jürgen Pieters (Gent), Bill Sherman (York), Els Stronks (Utrecht) and Garrelt Verhoeven (Amsterdam). 

Proceeding from the idea that reading constitutes a crucial form of intellectual exchange, the collaborators will collect and enhance evidence of how readers used their books to build knowledge and assimilate ideas. This is especially pertinent since the early modern period, just like the twenty-first century, saw the revolutionary rise of a new medium of communication which helped shape cultural formation and intellectual freedom. Although widely recognized as a promising approach with important theoretical implications, currently the study of reading practices still largely depends on individual researchers, whose work is seriously hampered by the limited access to an inherently fragmented body of material. The proposed collaboratory will connect scholarly expertise and provide added value to digital sources through user-generated content (e.g. explanatory material or fuller scholarly syntheses) in an electronic environment specifically designed for research and teaching purposes. It will offer, in short, an academic Wikipedia for the history of reading and the circulation of ideas. The project will create a transnational platform that enables scholars to (1) view, connect and study annotated books and readers' notes, (2) offer training to students and young researchers in handling readers' traces, and (3) make results freely accessible for teaching purposes, as well as for broader general interest by means of exhibitions, digital presentations and general publications. In order to expand this structural network, the principal partners in the collaboratory will prepare an application for a Marie Curie Initial Training Network.

Zie: http://www.annotatedbooksonline.com

• prof. dr. Arnoud Visser

• Paul Dijstelberge (Amsterdam)
• Anthony Grafton (Princeton)
• Lisa Jardine (UCL
• London)
• Jürgen Pieters (Gent)
• Garrelt Verhoeven (Amsterdam)

Het tijdschrift De zeventiende eeuw van de Werkgroep Zeventiende Eeuw zal met behulp van deze NWO subsidie een Open Access variant krijgen, die vanaf januari 2012 door Igitur aangeboden zal worden.

The Dutch Song Database (DSD) is a database with metadata on 140.000 songs and their 15.000 sources, such as songbooks. Built and rebuilt over a period of more than 25 years, this database was enlarged and enriched in many stages and projects, with grants from (among others) NWO and OCW. The DSD was published online in 2007. During the individual projects, parts of the DSD were adjusted to modern times, but never the time was found to curate the database as a whole, that is to make it compliant to the current standards. The model used to describe songs is internationally seen as a desirable one, yet because of the lack of standards the DSD has few possibilities for (international) collaboration. ‘Curating the Dutch Song Database’ creatives new perspectives in this, starting with participating in CLARIN-EU Search&Develop’s Multimedia/Multimodal Demonstrator

Negotiating Differences: Word, Image and Religion in the Dutch Republic (NWO, 2009-2010) In this monograph, a number of culturally oriented literary studies on developments in the seventeenth-century and eighteenth-century Dutch religious emblem serves to investigate the function of literature in the shaping of religious identities and, more in particular, in the managing and containing of confessional conflicts in the Dutch Republic. This monograph will consist of an introduction on its thesis and the Dutch emblem, and chapters on four crucial phases in the history of the Dutch religious emblem. Clearly, Dutch Protestant emblematics suffered a problematic start due to the fact that the religious emblems gave rise to (new) iconoclastic sentiments. The Protestant emblematists lived and worked in a tradition that dictated reserve with regard to imagery in the perception of faith; the religious emblem challenged this tradition. Nevertheless, being confronted with the enormous success of the religious emblem in the Southern Netherlands, Protestants emblematists such as Cats, De Brune, Heyns and Van Hoogstraten tried different strategies to get around ideological barriers. After 1680, a new interest in the Roman Catholic legacy arose amongst Protestant emblematists and their audience. This led to the publication of emblem books which advocated the combination of the characteristics of one religious denominations with those of another. This especially concerned the acceptation of images as a means to bolster confessional faith and adding emotional overtones to it. It can be assumed that the Protestants took advantage of a tacit and newly reached agreement on deploying images as an aid to the believer's memory and inner life. The success of Luyken's religious emblems serves to illustrate this development. There were certainly limits to this process of appropriation, but as the Enlightenment set in, new possibilities occurred, bridging the gap between the denominations even further. In a society where the analogical, emblematic of looking at nature and the world was more and more abandoned, the religious emblem flourished in new forms and shapes in emblem books made by for instance Spinniker, Graauwhart and Klinkhamer, indicating a new balance between different denominations. The final chapter will be dedicated to some reflections on the history as reconstructed in chapter 1 to 4, and on the relevance of this history for contemporary discussions on culture, identity and religion.

A large, fully searchable, and easily accessible database concerning Dutch song will provide much-needed national and international access to an important part of the Dutch national heritage. The applicants (prof. dr. L.P. Grijp, dr. D. van der Poel, dr. R. van Stipriaan, drs. M. de Bruin, dr. A. Leerintveld and dr. E. Stronks) propose to create such a database containing complete transcriptions and scans of 100,000 Dutch songs. The new database - 'Database Dutch Songs On Line' (DDSOL) - will stimulate research into Dutch song culture which draws on the increased opportunities provided by advances in technology which have significantly altered and especially broadened the scope of research in the humanities. The DDSOL will combine the work done by the Nederlandse Liederenbank (NLB, Dutch Song Database) and the Digitale Bibliotheek voor de Nederlandse Letteren (DBNL, Digital Library for Dutch Literature). The current internet version of the NLB - the most recent result of an NWO-project started in 1986 at the Utrecht University and continued by the Meertens Instituut with other organizations - has already put scholarship in the Netherlands at the international forefront of developments in the digitization of song culture. The NLB is unique not only for its size (one of the largest world wide) but especially for the richness of searchable metadata it provides on the songs it contains. However, it has one key deficiency: it contains very few transcriptions of the songs themselves. Individual songs (texts and melodies) are ultimately the key for studying song culture as a whole. The proposed project intends to address this need by coordinating two existing data sets, those of the DBNL and the NLB, and significantly expanding them into a comprehensive new database by adding a new, large data set with full transcriptions, links to scans and contextual information. The search possibilities of DDSOL will enable researchers to reconstruct networks of melodies and lyrics within the corpus. The applicants, together with a group of affiliated scholars, over the course of the project will produce two thematic volumes containing studies on religious and profane song culture. These studies will shed new light on the relationship between song and the formation and shaping of groups and group identities in Dutch society from the Middle Ages to the 19th century. Their central hypothesis will be that songs are an important factor in constructing social identity, and that such social identity (tied to confession, class, age, profession and gender), as well as shifts in it through time, can be traced through the ways in which the songs are intertwined, in patterns of production and reception, and in performance. The research program will also result in an English-language monograph, and several journal articles on the technical aspects of the project. The research done within the project will provide the foundational material for an ambitious culminating volume, 'A History of Dutch Song', to be written after 2013.

• dr. Dieuwke van der Poel

• drs M. de Bruin
• dr R. van Stipriaan
• dr A. Leerintveld

The development of the love emblem in the Netherlands, from c. 1600 onwards, can be seen a as manifestation of the successful literary relationship between the northern and southern part of the Low Countries. The commercial success of Plantijn's first Dutch translations of emblem books, published in Antwerp, continued after 1600 with the publication of original Dutch volumes published in Leiden and Amsterdam. Initially the Dutch love emblems were mainly Petrarchist in tone and content. The suffering of the lover caused by the whimsical hard-heartedness of the beloved is expressed in clever antitheses and paradoxes. The perspective of the male lover is dominant, although his role is that of victim. Often it is the male feelings that predominate. The many early volumes of love emblems that rolled off the presses were intended for the "courting youth" young men and women in search of a spouse. The heyday of love emblems also brought the publication of several volumes containing both emblems and songs. Hooft's Emblemata amatoria is one example (with 71 pages devoted to emblems and 73 to songs and sonnets), but also the less ambitiously published Cupido's lusthof (Cupid's Garden of Delight) of 1613. Combination volumes like these allowed for optimal social use. As the genre evolved, the playful and often Petrarchist tone of the first volumes made way for greater seriousness. In 1615 the love emblem acquired a new dimension with the publication of Vaenius's Amoris divini emblemata, a free adaptation of his previously published Amorum emblemata. Religious love emblematics was thereafter to a large extent influenced by Cats's Sinne- en minnebeelden (first published in 1618) and by Hugo's Pia desideria (1624). Hugo's Pia desideria would become the most influential emblem book published after Alciato's Emblematum liber (1531): the book was reprinted 49 times, and 90 translations and adaptations were published all over Europe. Yet, the relationship between the profane love emblems, Vaenius's Amoris divini emblemata en Hugo's Pia desideria have never been studied systematically, although some partial efforts were made. The way in which the Pia desideria was used to help shape and form the Contra-Reformation in the South, as well as the way in which these emblems manifested themselves in the North have not been the focus of recent research. The 'Pia Desideria Project' is aiming to change this situation by publishing:
* a digital, fully searchable edition of the Pia desideria with translations (by G. Huijing)
* a doctorate thesis on the position and role of the Pia desideria in the South (by Lien Roggen, supervised by Marc van Vaeck)
* a doctorate thesis on its role in the North (by Feike Dietz, supervised by Arie Gelderblom and Els Stronks, titled 'Emblematic Dynamics in the Seventeenth Century: Word, Image, Religion' )
* organizing a conference to conclude to project, focusing on related research on the Pia desideria in the rest of Europe (organized by Marc van Vaeck en Els Stronks)