Awarded Grants

Research Trip to the Netherlands in September-December 2011

Thanks to the generosity of the Association for Low Countries Studies, I was able to spend three months in the Hague, the Netherlands (September - December 2011) working on my doctoral thesis entitled 'The Family Picture: A Study of Identity Construction in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Portraits.' During this period of research and study, I was able to take advantage of libraries, archives, and museums in the Netherlands. I had access to library resources not normally available to me at the Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie (Netherlands Institute for Art History) and the Koninklijke Bibliotheek (National Library of the Netherlands). The Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie is one of the most important art-historical information centres for the study of Dutch art with a special collection of documentary, library, and archival materials. One of the unique features of this centre is their collection of boxes of portrait images. I searched through the portrait boxes for family portraits, and from this created a database of the family portraits in the collection from 1625-1700, along with finding relevant images for my research.

I also had the opportunity to visit museums and archives during this trip. In particular, I visited the Regionaal Archief (Regional Archive) in Leiden while doing research on the Backer family, who were from Amsterdam. In particular, I looked at a letter and a collection of writings concerning a dispute between the Backer and de la Court families over their family portraits and papers. In researching another Amsterdam family, the van Loons, I had the chance to visit the Van Loon Museum and meet with the curator. We viewed several books devoted to tracing the family's lineage, all of which had been written by members of the family. One text of specific interest to me, written by Nicolaas van Loon, was an in-depth lineage tracing the family's connection to various noble and gentry families. Included in the manuscript were various portraits of significant family members as well.

These library, collection, and archival visits have been indispensable to improving, building, and realising my thesis research and I am incredibly grateful for the support that the ALCS has offered me in this endeavour.

Kerry Gavaghan

Dutch Presence at the Reading Early Modern Conference July 2011

The ALCS generously sponsored the Dutch presence at the annual Early Modern Conference at the University of Reading. Over the last few years, this has grown to be the most important conference for early modern studies in the UK. Some 125 delegates gathered for three days to discuss this year’s theme ‘Communication and Exchange’. The Netherlands were well represented, both in various papers, including in the excellent plenary by Professor Howard Hotson (Oxford), and by the presence of several Dutch scholars. The conference was accompanied by an exhibition with materials from Reading’s Special Collections and the collections in the Department of Typography & Graphic Communications, which both contain a wealth of Dutch material. For those who were unable to attend, there is some more information on the exhibition and the accompanying ‘Featured Item’ on the Special Collections website:

Conference DisplayThe exhibition was formally launched with a well attended reception and will remain in the Main Library through the summer months. It will be highlighted again during Researchers’ Night at Reading, a Europe-wide event bringing together the public and researchers, which the University of Reading is proud to host on the 23rd of July, as only one of four UK institutions. For details, see:
http://www.reading.ac.uk/researchers-night/.

Esther Mijers, Department of History

Research Trip to the Netherlands March April 2011

With the support of Association for Low Countries Studies, I was able to spend three weeks in Amsterdam and Utrecht in March and April 2011 to further my doctoral research on seventeenth-century Dutch family portraits.  During this trip I visited the Koninklijke Bibliotheek to access Dutch sources that were not available at the Bodleian Library in Oxford.  I also had the opportunity to use the Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie (RKD) in The Hague, a unique art historical research centre with documentary, archival and photographic resources.  Most significantly, and I think most surprising for me, this research trip allowed me to meet and develop relationships with Dutch curators and scholars in my field.  This time spent in the Netherlands allowed me to advance and think through my research in order to determine what more needs to be completed on the project. I am very grateful for the generosity and support of the ALCS executive committee, without whom this trip would not have been possible. 

Kerry Gavaghan

Germanic Sandwich 2008

Germanic Sandwich was a conference which took place at Sheffield on 12-13 September 2008. The ALCS supported this event for £400 and the money was split over the 6 post grad attendants: Janneke Diepeveen (Berlin), Jessica Nowak and Mirjam Schmuck (Leipzig) Geert Stuyckens (Leuven), Susan Fittkau (Muenster), and Josefien Sweep (Amsterdam).

The report was written by Janneke Diepeveen.

 

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