Geert Janssen will stay at KNIR as NWIB-visiting professor to work on his project ‘The invention of the refugee in early modern Europe’, which is funded through a Vici grant from NWO. More specifically, he intends to study (archival) material from several Roman institutions, including the Jesuit Archives (ARSI), the Vatican Library as well as archival holdings in Florence. In addition, he will use the study facilities at KNIR to write an article about images (e.g. paintings, prints, drawings) of early modern refugees, some of which were produced in Rome in the sixteenth century. KNIR offers him just the right intellectual environment to carry out this research, and he looks forward to contributing to the institute’s wider academic activities.
Geert Janssen is professor of early modern history at the University of Amsterdam. He has a broad interest in European history between 1500-1800, in particular its political and religious cultures, and the history of (global) migration. In recent years, he published The Dutch Revolt and Catholic Exile in Reformation Europe (Cambridge UP, 2014) and co-edited, with Helmer Helmers, The Cambridge Companion to the Dutch Golden Age (Cambridge UP 2018), and with David de Boer, Refugee Politics in Early Modern Europe (Bloomsbury, 2024).
Educated at Groningen (BA/MA, 1999) and Leiden (PhD, 2005), Geert Janssen started his career as lecturer at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. In 2013 he was appointed at the University of Amsterdam. He served as Research Director of the Amsterdam School of Historical Studies (2014-2016) and as Head of Department of History, European Studies, Religious Studies, and Latin American Studies (2022-2025). Geert is a recipient of the Carla Musterd Teaching Award (2006), the Gerald Strauss Book Prize (2015), of research grants from the NWO (Rubicon, Veni, Vici), the British Academy, the Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst, and Bijzonder Onderzoeksfonds Vlaanderen.
