Dirk van Miert is principal investigator and project leader of the ERC funded project ‘Sharing Knowledge in Learned and Literary Networks – The Republic of Letters as a Pan-European Knowledge Society’ (SKILLNET). He is also Assistant Professor of Early Modern Cultural History and specializes in the history of knowledge.

Robin Buning is project assistant in the SKILLNET project. He received his MA in classics from Leiden University and his PhD in the history of philosophy from Utrecht University. He then was a postdoc with the ‘Cultures of Knowledge’ project at the University of Oxford. His interests include early modern correspondence and scholarly networks, digital humanities,…

Karen Hollewand is a postdoc in the SKILLNET project and concentrates on the conceptual history of the ideal of sharing knowledge in the Republic of Letters. She received a BA and MA in History from the University of Utrecht and studied the banishment of rebel humanist Hadriaan Beverland during her DPhil at the University of…

Dirk Hooijer is a BA student in History at Utrecht University and is interning in the SKILLNET project. Dirk is mostly interested in the cultural history of the Early Modern and Modern period, with a focus on themes like memory culture, nationalism and a preference for the French language and culture. For the SKILLNET project…

Manuel Llano is a PhD candidate in the SKILLNET project. He studied Philosophy of Culture and Media Studies at Leiden University, after earning a degree in Philosophy from the Autonomous University of Madrid. His research interests include book history, the interplay between scholarly communications and intellectual developments in early modern Europe, and new lines of…

Liliana Melgar  holds a PhD in Information Science from the Carlos III University in Madrid, in which she investigated scholarly annotations and crowdsourcing for audiovisual content. She has a bachelor in Library studies and a Masters degree in Digital Libraries awarded by Oslo University College, Tallinn University and Parma University. She has actively been involved…

Koen Scholten is a PhD candidate in the SKILLNET project. He obtained a BSc in Applied Physics from Delft University and an MSc in History and Philosophy of Science from Utrecht University. His research interests include the cultural aspects of early modern science, in particular scholarly identity, sociability, and credibility. His doctoral research focuses on…

Ingeborg van Vugt is a postdoc in the SKILLNET project and focuses on the social dynamics structuring the conduct and behaviour of the citizens of the Republic of Letters. Using tools and insights from graph- and game theory, she aims to investigate the ways in which early modern scholars constantly monitored their interactions with one…

Cristiano Amendola is an associate research fellow on the SKILLNET project. He holds a BA in Modern Literature and an MA in Italian philology from Federico II University of Naples. In 2018 he received his PhD degree at Liège University, with a dissertation that focused on the rhetorical and literary strategies through which Italian scholars…

Isabelle Buhre was a research assistant at the SKILLNET project. She studied Latin language and literature at the University of Amsterdam and KU Leuven (BA), and political science at the London School of Economics (MSc.). Her main research interests are geopolitics, international relations and Latin linguistics. At SKILLNET, she prepared the database of letters for…

Nienke van Doeselaar is a BA student interning in the SKILLNET project. She is following a BA in Dutch Language and Culture in Utrecht, with a minor in the history of the early modern period. Her research interests include the literary aspects of early modern Europe, in particular self-representation and the formation and representation of…

Ellen van Heteren is a BA student of history at the Free University of Amsterdam and has a special interest for medieval/early modern European history. She will be helping the SKILLNET project as an intern, assisting research on the social status of teachers of the Latin schools in the Republic of the 17th century.

Milo van de Pol is data curator in the SKILLNET project and at the Huygens Institute of Netherlands History in Amsterdam. He received his MA in Medieval Studies from Utrecht University. He is also an external PHD candidate at Leiden University, researching the role of intermediaries in the dissemination of knowledge in scholarly and political networks…

Leonie Price was an associate research fellow working on the SKILLNET project. She holds a BA in History from Durham University and recently graduated with an MA in Historical Research from the University of Sheffield. She specialises in material culture and the history of the family, with particular focus on the materiality of early modern…

Lars Punt is an intern in the SKILLNET project. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in History which he obtained in 2019 at Utrecht University. Lars is mostly interested in Early Modern and Modern Italian history. For the SKILLNET project he will mostly be focusing on cleaning and structuring the data generated by the crowdsourcing project…

Teunie Rouwendal is a BA student English Language and Culture at Utrecht University and is interning in the SKILLNET project. She is mainly interested in literature from the Late Medieval and Early Modern period. Her research interests include the role of religion in society and gender in these periods. For the SKILLNET project she will…

Halfdan Simonsen was an MA student interning in the SKILLNET project. He obtained his BA in history from the University of Bergen and then worked with artists and musicians establishing an artists residency and collective in the Italian countryside. Having returned to academia, he did a research master in history at Utrecht University, with particular focus on…

Samantha Sint Nicolaas was an MA student interning in the SKILLNET project. She graduated in history from Durham University in 2017. Having been introduced to French cultural history during her undergraduate degree, she did an MA in Cultural History of Modern Europe at Utrecht University. Her research interests include early modern Europe, particularly the interplay…

Nathalie Smit is a Research Master student Historical, Literary and Cultural Studies at Radboud University Nijmegen and is interning in the SKILLNET project. She received a BA in English Language and Culture and a BA in History from Radboud University Nijmegen in 2018. Her research interests include women’s participation in scientific research in the Early…