Teylers professor dr. Eric Jorink holds the special chair ‘Enlightenment and religion in historical perspective'. He is senior researcher at the Huygens Institute (KNAW - Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences) in Amsterdam. The focus of his research and teaching is the interaction of science, religion and art in Early Modern Europe.

More information about Eric Jorink

Curriculum vitae

Eric Jorink studied History and Philosophy at the University of Groningen and the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris. He was lauréat of the Fondation Prix de Paris in 1993. In 2004 he obtained his doctorate cum laude in Groningen for a thesis on the relation between science and religion in the Dutch Golden Age. The dissertation was awarded with a prize of the Praemium Erasmianum Foundation, and published in English as Reading the Book of Nature in the Dutch Golden Age, 1575-1715 (Leiden 2010).

Jorink has widely published on the scientific culture in early modern Europe, including the culture of collecting, the relation between art and science, and the emergence of radical biblical criticism. In 2012-2013 he was Andrew W. Mellon visiting professor at the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London. In 2013 he was appointed Teylers professor at Leiden University, were he teaches on the relationship between science and religion, including the Radical Enlightenment, apocalyptic movements, and human-animal relationships. He is leading the NWO-funded  project Visualizing the Unknown. Scientific Observation, Representation and Communication in 17th-century Science and Society (2021-2026), in cooperation with museum Boerhaave, Bibliotheca Herztiana-Max Planck Institute for Art History, the Royal Society of London and the Rijksmuseum. Jorink is currently finishing a biography of Johannes Swammerdam (1637-1680).

Selected publications

• (With J. Woodall and E. Wouk eds)  Humans and Other Animals in the Art of the Low Countries. Netherlands Yearbook for History of Art/Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 71 (Leiden 2021).
• De Ark, de Tempel, het Museum. Veranderende modellen van kennis in de Eeuw van de Verlichting (inaugural lecture Leiden University, 2014).
• (With D. van Miert eds) Isaac Vossius (1618-1689) between Science and Scholarship.  Brill’s Studies in Intellectual History 214 (Leiden 2012).
• (With B. Ramakers eds) Art and Science in the Early Modern Low Countries. Netherlands Yearbook for History of Art/Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 61 (Zwolle 2011).
•  (With A. Maas eds) Newton and the Netherlands. How Isaac Newton was fashioned in the Dutch Republic  (Leiden 2012) .
•  Reading the Book of Nature in the Dutch Golden Age, 1575-1715. Brill’s Studies in Intellectual History 191 (Leiden 2010).

Ancillary activities

• Senior researcher at the Huygens Institute (KNAW - Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences) in Amsterdam. Contact: eric.jorink@huygens.knaw.nl.
• Member Teylers Godgeleerd Genootschap

Teaching

Religious studies (MA)
Religious studies (BA)