Faculty of Humanities
Prestigious NWO-Spinoza Prize for UvA-‘man of letters’ Joep Leerssen
On 2 June, the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) announced the winner of the NWO-Spinoza Prize for 2008. The winner is J. Th. (Joep) Leerssen, professor of Modern European Literature at the University of Amsterdam. The NWO-Spinoza Prize, also seen as the ‘Dutch Nobel Prize', is awarded annually to four Dutch researchers considered to rank among the country's top scientists. Leerssen receives the prize - worth one and a half million euro - for, among other things, his innovative contribution to imagology and Irish Studies and his outstanding research on cultural nationalism.
Leerssen has an impressive list of publications to his name focusing on national stereotypes and the relationship between literature, historical awareness and nationalism. His recent books National Thought in Europe: A Cultural History (2006) and Imagology (2007) have permanently established his reputation. His writings often trigger innovation in the disciplines described. Leerssen is at the forefront of scientific developments: although in the past his monographs have often initially met with a critical reception, they soon became authoritative in their field.
Cultural nationalism paradigms unified
In its jury report, the NWO notes that Leerssen has played an important role in three disciplines. In the area of Irish studies - the study of Irish cultural history on the basis of Ireland's various cultural traditions and languages - his books are considered to be seminal. Leerssen has also unified two existing paradigms in the study of nineteenth-century cultural nationalism: one that views the nation as a latently present metaphysical entity and the other that sees it as a product of political manipulation. In doing so he demonstrated that national movements should be studied largely on the basis of their cultural ideals and self-images, not only their political actions and the consequences of those actions. Finally, he has consolidated the field of imagology - the study of the formation of images, national awareness and stereotypes - by bringing together the many initiatives in this area around the world. His research into the formation of images and national stereotypes has, moreover, led to a new perspective on the history of cultural nationalism. In his research, he has adopted a comparative European approach that studies networks from the Balkan to the Basque Country and Finland. He is currently working on a major project that draws on this model to describe the nineteenth-century reception history of medieval literature in relation to the concurrent nation-forming processes in Europe.
Leerssen is one of the founders and leading lights of the interdisciplinary field of European Studies, now a highly successful degree course and productive research programme at the UvA. Using his own unique approach, he has developed an impressive interdisciplinary methodology for this discipline, which combines the history of political ideas and cultural history and also studies literature as a source for the history of patterns of imagination and ideologies.
Comparative research at European level
The laureate is a leading and erudite academic with an extensive knowledge of languages and history. Leersen's exceptional rhetorical talent makes him not only a popular speaker, but also an inspiring and compelling lecturer. In 2007 he was nominated for the UvA Lecturer of the Year award and received a special prize for eloquence and erudition. His students see him as exemplary in the way he makes difficult concepts comprehensible to all students without simplifying them or obscuring nuances.
Leerssen is highly honoured to have been awarded the Prize: ‘This is an immense and exciting stimulus, especially for the Humanities and especially here in Holland. We are well placed to bring together research groups from different European countries to conduct comparative research at the European level. I intend to use the resources and status of the NWO-Spinoza Prize to take concrete steps to develop this initiative.'
Prof. J. Th. (Joep) Leerssen (1955, Leiden) studied Comparative Literature and English at RWTH Aachen University. In 1980 he obtained an honours MA in Anglo-Irish Studies from University College Dublin. From 1982 to 1984 he was a teaching assistant at the University of Toronto and from 1984 to 1986 assistant lecturer in Aachen, after which he gained his doctorate with honours from Utrecht University in 1986. Since 1991 he has been professor of Modern European Literature at the Faculty of Humanities at the UvA. From 1996 to 2006 he was also director of the Huizinga Institute, a Dutch national research institute and Graduate School of Cultural History. In 2003 he was a visiting professor at Harvard University, and in 2009 he will be a visiting fellow at Magdalene College Cambridge. Leersen was recently appointed a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW).
NWO-Spinoza prizes and the UvA
The NWO-Spinoza Prize has been awarded annually since 1995. Leerssen is the eighth UvA researcher to receive the prize. Among the earlier recipients were Robbert Dijkgraaf (mathematical physics), Ed van den Heuvel (astronomy) and Johan van Benthem (mathematical logic). Leerssen is the first UvA researcher in the humanities to receive the honour. The official presentation of the NWO-Spinoza Prize 2008 will take place on Wednesday, 19 November 2008 in The Hague. Ronald Plasterk, Minister of Education, Culture and Science, will present the prize.