Femke Valkhoff is a PhD candidate at Utrecht University within the project How do Cities Make Women? Empowerment, Self-Development, and Learned Identities in the Early Modern Dutch City. Her interdisciplinary research explores how women in the early modern period were able to develop intellectually within various Dutch cities. 

Before joining Utrecht University, Femke Valkhoff worked as a junior teacher at the Vrije Universiteit (Amsterdam) and as a junior researcher on the project Women Collectors in Art 1780-1980 at the RKD - Netherlands Institute for Art History. During her studies at the University of Amsterdam, she interned with the project The Female Impact, which examines the influence of women on the Dutch art market in the seventeenth century by studying household consumption. Simultaneously, she interned with the Women of the Rijksmuseum project, which explores the museum’s collection from a gender perspective and makes these stories accessible to the public. Her research on the portrait of Maritge Vooght, painted by Frans Hals, resulted in an article for The Rijksmuseum Bulletin and the award-winning master’s thesis ‘Out of the Shadows,’ which explores the role of Haarlem female brewers within their families, breweries, and as art collectors for their households.

Publications

‘Frans Hals: Portrait of Maritge Cleasdr Vooght’ in Frans Hals: Master of the Fleeting Moment (Berlin: Gemäldegalerie, 2024), 138-139. Exhibition Catalog. 

‘“Vrouwen die Brouwen”: The Life and Work of Maritge Claesdr Vooght’, The Rijksmuseum Bulletin 71 (2023) 1: 32-41.