Joseph T. Leerssen#
| Membership Number: | 2857 |
| Membership type: | ORDINARY |
| Section: | LITERARY & THEATRICAL STUDIES |
| Elected: | 2010 |
| Main Country of Residence: | THE NETHERLANDS |
| Homepage(s): | http://leerssen.nl |
Present and Previous Positions
- Emeritus Professor of Modern European Literature at the University of Amsterdam
- Emeritus Professor at Maastricht University
- 2019 Part-time appointment as research professor at the Sociaal Historisch Centrum Limburg / Maastricht University
- 2010 - 2015 Academy Professorship, Royal Netherlands Academy (KNAW)
- 1991 - 2022 Professor of Modern European Literature in the Dept. of European Studies, Universiteit van Amsterdam.
- 1986 Lecturer, then (1989) senior lecturer at the Dept. of European Studies, Universiteit van Amsterdam.
Fields of Scholarship
- Nationalism and the history of national movements
- Survival of 19th-century cultural nationalism as 20th-century banal nationalism and 21st-century ethnopopulism
- Rhetoric and history of cultural and national stereotyping and ethnic characterization (“imagology”)
- History of border regions and cultural minorities, especially in the Low Countries
- History of the humanities since 1800, especially philology
- Digital humanities: the database-assisted capture, analysis and visualization of complex communicative networks, cultural practices and ideological diffusion patterns
Honours and Awards
- Honours, distinctions:
- Academy Professorship, Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW)
- Honorary Doctorate, University of Bucharest
- Honorary Fellow, Trinity College Dublin
- Elected memberships (regular):
- Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW)
- Koninklijke Hollandsche Maatschappij der Wetenschappen
- Maatschappij der Nederlandse Letterkunde
- Academia Europaea
- Elected memberships (honorary/corresponding):
- Royal Irish Academy
- Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften
- Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen
- Awards/citations:
- Recipient of the Madame de Staël Prize 2020
- Recipient of the Spinoza Prize 2008
- Recipient of the NFWO comittee medal
- Mere Irish & and Fíor-Ghael received the JC Baakprijs in 1988
- Remembrance and imagination among the Times Literary Supplement Books of the Year for 1996
- National thought in Europe shortlisted for the Europe Book Prize 2007 and thematized for the Nations and Nationalism Debate 2012 (London School of Economics)
- Spiegelpaleis Europa shortlisted for the Jan Hanlo Essay Prize 2013, awarded the Wijnaendts Francken Prize 2015
- Encyclopedia of Romantic Nationalism in Europe among the Times Literary Supplement Books of the Year for 2018
- Shortlisted Faculty of Humanities (University of Amsterdam) Lecturer of the Year, 2006, 2007, 2019
- Elected Faculty of Humanities Lecturer of the Year, 2013, 2021
- Shortlisted University of Amsterdam Lecturer of the Year 2008, 2013, 2021
