Jasper van der Steen is assistant professor at the Institute for History.

More information about Jasper van der Steen

Research

I am a historian of political culture in early modern Europe. I am willing to supervise a range of topics in early modern Dutch and European history and welcome enquiries about research on the following themes:

• dynastic culture and politics
• local, provincial and supraregional politics in the Dutch Republic, 1600-1795
• the political use of references to the past
• ‘family’ as a social system for the exercise of power and the management of property
• political rhetoric, oratory and orality

Together with colleagues I am currently involved in the project ‘Quiet Rebels? A Social History of Political Rhetoric’ and supervise the PhD subproject ‘Rhetoric in the Republic’.

At the moment I am finishing my second monograph De Nassaus. Een vorstelijk familiebedrijf 1500-1800 . Scholars focusing on primogeniture and the rise of the modern state have long assumed that family is an irrational social system for governance. I turn this assumption on its head and argue that the wider family, in fact, plays a vital and often overlooked role in the exercise and transmission of power. Using a conceptual framework developed in business studies, I explored the 'corporate culture' of the Nassau family during the period 1550-1815. By doing so, I developed a new model for writing dynastic history that challenges existing assumptions about family and power. My project, which was supported by the Innovational Research Incentives Scheme (Veni) of the Dutch Research Council, ran from 1 February 2018 to 31 January 2023. I published ‘Dynastic Scenario Thinking in the Holy Roman Empire’ in Past & Present (2022). The volume Dynastischer Nachwuchs als Hoffnungsträger und Argument in der Frühen Neuzeit, which I co-edited with Irena Kozmanová, was published by De Gruyter in 2023 and my chapter in the edited volume Dynasties and State Formation in Early Modern Europe (Amsterdam University Press, 2023) appeared in 2023 as well.

My first monograph, Memory Wars in the Low Countries, 1566-1700 (Brill, 2015) investigated the divergence of public memories of the Revolt in the Habsburg Netherlands in the South and the Dutch Republic in the North. I explained how these memories became the objects of fierce contestation in domestic political struggles, on both sides of the border and throughout the seventeenth century. Through this work, I challenged widespread assumptions about the supposed modernity of cultural memory, arguing that early modern public memory did not require the presence of state actors, nationalism, or modern mass media in order to play a role of political importance in both North and South. I have also co-edited and published in open access Memory before Modernity: Practices of Memory in Early Modern Europe with colleagues. Additionally, I have published my research results in The Sixteenth Century Journal, Early Modern Low Countries, and De Zeventiende Eeuw, as well as book chapters on memory and politics in A Cultural History of Memory in the Early Modern Age (Bloomsbury, 2020) and Early Modern War Narratives and the Revolt in the Low Countries (Manchester University Press, 2020).

In addition to my research, I engage with a diverse range of scholars, building networks and fostering collaborations. I serve as treasurer of the Werkgroep Zeventiende Eeuw, secretary of the Vlaams-Nederlandse Vereniging voor Nieuwe Geschiedenis, and secretary of the foundation Early Modern Low Countries.
 

Curriculum vitae

Employment history

2022-present: assistant professor, Leiden University
2018-2022: postdoctoral researcher, Leiden University
2016-2018: wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
2013-2014: lecturer, University of Amsterdam
2008-2016: respectively PhD candidate, lecturer, university lecturer (UD) and postdoctoral researcher, Leiden University

Education

PhD (2014): Leiden University
MA (2009): University of Durham
BA (2007): University College Roosevelt

Grants

2024: Startersbeurs
2017: Veni, Dutch Research Council (NWO)
2015: Rubicon, NWO

Fellowships

2016: Leibniz-Institut für Europäische Geschichte Mainz
2015: Leiden University Library

Publications

Activities