Rozanne Versendaal is an Assistant Professor of French Literature and Culture, specialising in Late Medieval and Early Modern French literature and book culture (15th-16th centuries).

In 2022, she successfully defended her Ph.D. dissertation 'Le mandement joyeux et la culture joyeuse en France et dans les anciens Pays-Bas (XVe-XVIIe siècles)' (see: publications). In her dissertation, Rozanne shows how parody in Late Medieval and Early Modern society stimulated social cohesion and how joyful texts provided an important platform for discussion in a rapidly changing world. Rozanne is currently working on the publication of her dissertation.

Rozanne is also working on two new research projects: a literary project about parody in the Late Middle Ages and a book-historical project on multilingual books in 15th- and 16th-century Antwerp. She is project leader and co-supervisor in the PhD project ‘Empowering Individuals, Opening Cities: Multilingual Books as Cultural Brokers in the Sixteenth Century', which also includes Pauline Bobichon (PhD candidate), Natalia Petrovskaia (co-supervisor) and Arnoud Visser (PhD supervisor).

In July 2023, Rozanne Versendaal was a Postdoctoral Spring Fellow at the Royal Netherlands Institute in Rome. During the academic year 2023-2024, Rozanne Versendaal was a Niels Stensen Postdoctoral Fellow at the École nationale supérieure des sciences de l'information et des bibliothèques (ENSSIB) in Lyon, France, and visited the department of French of the Université de Lausanne with a travel grant from the Distinguished Women Scientists Fund (Landelijk Netwerk Vrouwelijke Hoogleraren). In autumn 2024, Rozanne Versendaal will conduct research on multilingual books in Antwerp in the sixteenth century as a Tiele Fellow.

Rozanne Versendaal is a board member and secretary of the Utrecht University Centre for Medieval Studies. She is also an editorial board member of Queeste. Journal of medieval literature in the Low Countries and a member of the Meesterschapsteam Moderne Vreemde Talen.

Rozanne Versendaal teaches in the BA program French Language and Culture and in several MA programs (French: Education and Communication, Literature Today and Professional and Literary Translation) and in the RMA program Ancient, Medieval and Renaissance Studies. Together with Marie Steffens, Rozanne Versendaal also conducts research on the courses taught in the BA program French Language and Culture. Steffens and Versendaal are the principal investigators of the Higher Education Research Project 'Learning Languages Without Grammar exercises? (Perceived) Effectiveness of French Language Acquisition Courses at UU'.

More info: see Rozanne Versendaal's CV.