I am a researcher, writer, and musician. I work on play, new media, art and popular culture. This serves as a basis for narrative essays and audio stories in which I intertwine personal experiences with a reconstruction of seemingly insignificant historical moments or cultural events. I move back and forth between storytelling and critical analysis in an attempt to capture something that feels essential to me, something that allows me to understand the world we are living in.

More information about Bram Ieven

Fields of interest

• Dutch Studies
• Aesthetics
• Modernism
• Marxism
• De Stijl
• Globalisation

Research

I am currently working on two research projects, both funded by the Dutch research council (NWO). A first project studies the ubiquity of play in media and politics. A second project takes hip hop and urban arts as a method for thinking differently about Dutchness and cultural identity. Both projects are team efforts and are focussed on societal impact. Co-creation with musicians, choreographers, and game designers is essential to this: we are developing two podcasts, a documentary, and the blueprint for a Dutch Hip Hop Archive.

Together with Feico Sobel, I write for theater and develop audio stories under the monicker Koma Kollektief. As a musician, I maintain a long-term collaboration with Aafke Romeijn, and I have a musical solo project called Jonge Woudloper.

Teaching activities

Bram Ieven is an assistant professor of Dutch literature and culture at Leiden University, where he teaches courses on Dutch left-leaning communism (Pannekoek, Gorter, Roland-Holst), De Stijl, and Dutch literature in a globalized world.

Curriculum vitae

Prior to joining the Dutch department at Leiden University, Bram Ieven has been an assistant professor of comparative literature at Utrecht University (2008-2013), a visiting scholar at Duke University (2010) and a visiting professor at the University of California Santa Barbara (2011). In 2013-2014 he and Wendelien van Oldenburgh are hosting the art and politics seminar at the Master of Artistic Research at the Royal Academy of Art (KABK), The Hague. In 2010 he co-organized Waiting for the Political Moment (with Frans-Willem Korsten), a conference and artistic event that took place at Utrecht (BAK, Utrecht University) and Rotterdam (WolfArt Project Space). He has published Machinic Deconstruction: Literature/Technics/Politics (2007) and co-edited De nieuwe Franse filosofie (2011). He lives in Utrecht.

Education

2007
PhD in Comparative Literature, Leiden University, The Netherlands

2003
MPhil in Comparative Literature, Magna Cum Laude, University of Leuven, Belgium

2002
MA (Licentiaat) in Philosophy, Magna Cum Laude, University of Leuven, Belgium

2000
BA (Kandidaat) in Philosophy, Cum Laude, University of Leuven, Belgium

Professional Appointments

2013 -
Leiden University, Department of Dutch Language and Culture, Assistant Professor of Dutch Studies

2008 - 2013
Utrecht University, Department of Modern Languages, Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature

2007-2008
Provinciale Hogeschool Limburg, Department of Fine Arts, Lecturer in Philosophy and Aesthetics

Fall 2007
Tilburg University, Department of Cultural Studies, Lecturer in Cultural Studies

Key publications

(2013) ‘Memories of Modernism: Chris Marker, Jacques Rancière and the Reels of Modernism’ In: Rancière and Film, ed. P. Bowman. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

(2013) ‘The Forgetting of Aesthetics: Individuation, Technology, and Aesthetics in Bernard Stiegler’, New Formations, nr. 77, pp. 76-96.

(2011) ‘Deleuze Modernist’, Deleuze Studies Journal, vol. 5, nr. 1, pp. 84-96.

(2012) ‘Sovereignty’ (with Frans-Willem Korsten) In: The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Globalization, ed. G. Ritzer. Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 1899-1906.