Inger Leemans is Professor of Cultural History at the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities of Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and PI of NL-Lab, a research group on Dutch Culture and Identity at the Humanities Cluster of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW).

Her research focusses on early modern cultural history, the history of emotions and the senses, cultural economy, history of knowledge and digital humanities. She has published about the history of pornography, (radical) Enlightenment, cultural infrastructure, stock markets and financial crises. Her text book on eighteenth-century literature Worm en donder. Geschiedenis van de Nederlandse literatuur 1700-1800 (co-author Gert-Jan Johannes) was hailed in the press as ‘a masterpiece’. Often, her research triggers media attention, see e.g. the Financiële Dagblad about her inaugural lecture in 2011, journal Elsevier about her research on embodied emotions, NRC about Digital Humanities, Trouwon wind trade and speculation, and her TedX Talkon ‘Making Sense of Finance’.

Inger Leemans was the coordinator of the Odeuropa project, olfactory heritage and sensory mining, She furthermore coordinated projects on the cultural history of finance, on early modern visual culture and the culture of violence, and collaborated in various digital humanities projects (e.g. Clariah+, Golden Agents). For the Global Knowledge Society project, Leemans coordinated the working group Knowledge and the Market, resulting in the.volume Early Modern Knowledge Societies as Affective Economies: Knowledge – Market – Affect (Routledge).

Inger Leemans is a member of the Royal Netherands Society of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) and the Koninklijke Hollandse Maatschappij der Wetenschappen. She is a board member the American Historical Review, the Dutch National Research Council for Cultural Heritage (NOE), the National Graduate School for Cultural History Huizinga Institute, the Thijssen-Schoute Stichting, , and of the Raad voor Geesteswetenschappen (KNAW Council for the Humanities). As chair of the Humanities Committee for Nationale Commissie Sectorplannen, Leemans advises the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science (OCW). Leemans is a Trust Person (vertrouwenspersoon) for the VU Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities.

Office hours: Tuesday

Expertise

Early modern cultural history
History of Knowledge
Cultural Economics
History of the body, emotions, senses, sexuality
Digital Humanities

Projects

• NWO Internationalization:Banking on Financial History, with University of Herfortshire - University of Tokyo - Utrecht University
• Odeuropa:Olfactory heritage and sensory mining,
• NWO Creative Industries: In Search of Scents Lost - Reconstructing the Volatile Heritage of the Avant-garde
• Affective Economies- A cultural history of Stock Trade. Cf. Inaugural Lecture & 3D-reconstruction of the Amsterdam Stock Exchange, with Timothy De Paepe.
• NWO/FWO ‘ITEMP: Imagineering Violence: Techniques of Early Modern Performativity in the Northern and Southern Netherlands 1630-1690’, with Université Libre de Bruxelles - Gent University - University of Leiden
• Advisor for / collaborator in: Clariah+, Golden Agents, Republic
• Global Knowledge Societyproject,Affective Economies - Knowledge and the Market, with Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Descartes Center Utrecht, NIAS
• eScience project: Embodied Emotions - Mapping Bodily Expression of Emotions from a Historical Perspective
• QuPiD2: Quality & perspectives in deep data - AAA Data Science project, with UvA
• Visualising Uncertainty, with CLTL (Piek Vossen Computational Linguistics group -VU) & the Netherlands eScience Center
• INVENiT- Digital Humanities and Linked Data for Creatives Industries research, with VU Computer Science

Amsterdam Stock Exchange 3D MOdel by Timothy de Paepe (https://3dtheater.wordpress.com/)

Bachelor: Early modern history, Introduction to Culture and Power, BA-thesis advisory
Minors: course History of Emotions in minor European History and Culture, course Digital Hermeneutics and Visualizations in minor Digital Humanities
Master: Introduction "From Source to Public", Tutorials (e.g. about history of banks, stock trade and financial crises)

Research master: Core course, e.g. on environmental humanites & emotion studies

See for detailed list of courses the study guide

• Dr. C.L. Thijssen-Schoute Stichting | Den Haag | Bestuurder | 2014-02-01 - present
• Ministerie OCW, Nationale Commissie Sectorplannen | Den Haag | Bestuurder | 2024-04-01 - 2029-12-28
• Huizinga Instituut - National Research School for Cultural H | Amsterdam | Bestuurder | 2017-07-01 - present
• Curatorium Prof.dr. T. van Kalmthout | Amsterdam | Bestuurder | 2016-04-01 - present
• Curatorium prof. dr. F.J. Dijksterhuis | Amsterdam | Bestuurder | 2016-06-01 - present
• Board of Editors of the American Historical Review | Chicago | Bestuurder | 2023-07-01 - present
• Curatorium commissie prof. dr. M. Parry | Amsterdam | Bestuurder | 2016-04-01 - present
• Nationale Onderzoeksraad Erfgoed | Amersfoort | Adviseur | 2016-01-01 - present
• Board of Advisors Odotheka - European Research Project | Ljubljana | Adviseur | 2022-05-03 - present
• Nationale Wetenschapsagenda | Den Haag | Bestuurder | 2024-10-01 - present

Ancillary activities are updated daily