Matthijs Jonker studies the transcultural and trans-Atlantic production and circulation of knowledge in the early modern period, especially the functions of images and illustrations in this context in (present-day) Mexico, Italy and Spain. 
 
Earlier, he was Director of Studies in Art History and Cultural Sciences at the Royal Netherlands Institute in Rome, and Postdoctoral Fellow at the Bibliotheca Hertziana – Max-Planck-Institut für Kunstgeschichte in Rome (BHMPI), where he started his current research project. 
 
Matthijs Jonker started his academic career at the University of Amsterdam, where he wrote his dissertation about the Academization of Art in Italy in the sixteenth and seventeenth century: The Academization of Art: The Early Histories of the Accademia del Disegno and the Accademia di San Luca.
 
Together with dr. Katherine Reinhart he is currently completing an edited volume on the visual culture of scientific societies from the Renaissance until the Enlightenment. The book will be published by Harvey Miller / Brepols.
 
Matthijs Jonker is affiliated scholar in the Max Planck Research Group ‘Visualizing Science in Media Revolutions’ with Dr. Sietske Fransen (PI) at the BHMPI. He is a member of the executive committee of the research network Scientiae: Disciplines of Knowing in the Early Modern World.