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Dr. M. (Maartje) van Gelder

Early Modern History
Faculty of Humanities
Geschiedenis
Photographer: Stephanie de Graaf

Visiting address
  • Kloveniersburgwal 48
  • Room number: D1.04B
Postal address
  • Postbus 1610
    1000 BP Amsterdam
  • Profile

    I am an associate professor in early modern history, with a focus on Europe and the Mediterranean. I am interested in how people and rulers navigated political and social conflict, change, and environmental disasters in the early modern city. What fascinates me is how people in the past opted to (not) document certain events, and what specific silences and gaps in the archives can tell us. My earlier work focused on migration and commerce in Italy, the interplay between famines and international trade, Christian-Islamic contacts, and civic ritual and contestation. I have a keen interest in chronological comparisons and collaborations with specialists of other regions.

    My current book project, provisionally entitled Uncovering Protest in Venice. Contestation and Archival Politics in the Early Modern Period, focuses on the power at play in the archive, drawing inspiration from postcolonial studies, which have shown how power inequalities silence certain voices in archives, in narratives, and, ultimately, in history. Working on foreign diplomatic dispatches sent from Venice, I noticed reports on food riots, invasions of the Ducal Palace, and demonstrations in Saint Mark’s Square: popular political actions that according to official sources never occurred in Venice. Overviews of early modern European history, in fact, present Venice – one of the largest cities of that era – as the benchmark of political stability, its people essentially politically mute. I realized this was a missing political dimension, which allowed me to track the process of archival suppression. The book aims to show how ordinary Venetians were written out of government records, and hence out of history. Through a revision of Venetian social and political history, it deals with the fundamental question “Who owns the past?”. I previously published on these themes in Past and Present and The Journal of Modern History.

    Combining my earlier work on famine and international trade with my interest in food riots and urban protest, I am also interested in how cities changed socially, politically, culturally, and spatially during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when climate change caused cyclical harvest failures, famines, and waves of popular protest. This will be the topic of my VICI project Daily Bread, funded by NWO and starting in 2025.

    Short bio:

    I studied Economic and Social History at the University of Amsterdam and the Università di Ca' Foscari di Venezia. For my PhD (2007) on migration and commerce in early modern Venice, I spent a lot of time in the Venetian, Florentine and Vatican archives and, through two grants from the Marie Curie programme "European Doctorate in the Social History of Europe and the Mediterranean”, was part of Ca’ Foscari’s doctorate programme. NWO awarded me a VENI grant in 2011 for a project on informal politics and diplomacy in early modern Venice. That year I also spent a semester as Honorary Research Fellow at Birkbeck, University of London. In 2013, I was Queen Wilhelmina Visiting Professor at Columbia University and Fellow at the Italian Academy of Advanced Studies in America (New York).

    In 2018-2019, I was a fellow at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences (NIAS) and a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. An Aspasia grant from NWO supported my project on Venetian protest and the politics of forgetting. In 2023, I spent three months as a visiting professor at the Royal Netherlands Institute in Rome. Between 2020-2022, I was the director of the Amsterdam School of Historical Studies (ASH). I am the co-founder and former director of UvA's Amsterdam Centre for Urban History (ACUH).  I am currently the co-chair of the Associate Professors Sounding Board of the Dutch Network of Women Professors, together with Roshanak Darvishzadeh (University of Twente). Recently, I co-founded the research network Archives of Power/The Power of Archives with colleagues at UvA, Leiden, and Utrecht: we invite Research MA students, PhDs, and experienced researchers with an interest in archives as sites of knowledge production and power struggles to join us.

  • Publications

    2024

    2023

    2020

    • van Gelder, M. (2020). Protest in the Piazza: Contested space in early modern Venice . In M. van Gelder, & C. Judde de Larivière (Eds.), Popular Politics in an Aristocratic Republic : Political Conflict and Social Contestation in Late Medieval and Early Modern Venice (pp. 129-157). (The body in the city). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003017790-6 [details]
    • van Gelder, M., & Judde de Larivière, C. (2020). Introduction. In M. van Gelder, & C. Judde de Larivière (Eds.), Popular Politics in an Aristocratic Republic : Political Conflict and Social Contestation in Late Medieval and Early Modern Venice (pp. 1-21). (The body in the city). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003017790-12 [details]
    • van Gelder, M., & Judde de Larivière, C. (Eds.) (2020). Popular Politics in an Aristocratic Republic: Political Conflict and Social Contestation in Late Medieval and Early Modern Venice. (The body in the city). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003017790 [details]

    2018

    2017

    • Deneweth, H., de Block, G., Delpeut, T., Franck, H., Greefs, H., Kamp, J., Muurling, S., Van Damme, I., van Gelder, M., van Steensel, A., & Vrints, A. (2017). Stadsgeschiedenis in buitenlandse historische tijdschriften (2016). Stadsgeschiedenis, 12(2), 170-196. [details]

    2016

    • Brouwer, P., Deneweth, H., Furnée, J. H., van Gelder, M., van der Heijden, M., & Muurling, S. (2016). Stadsgeschiedenis in buitenlandse tijdschriften (2015). Stadsgeschiedenis, 11(2), 212-246. [details]

    2015

    2013

    2011

    • van Gelder, M. (2011). Acquiring artistic expertise: the agent Daniel Nijs and his contacts with artists in Venice. In M. Keblusek, & B. V. Noldus (Eds.), Double agents: cultural and political brokerage in early modern Europe (pp. 111-123). (Studies in medieval and reformation traditions; No. 154). Brill. https://doi.org/10.1163/ej.9789004202696.i-280.14 [details]

    2009

    • van Gelder, M. (2009). How to influence Venetian economic policy : collective petitions of the Netherlandish merchant community in the early seventeenth century. Mediterranean Historical Review, 24(1), 29-47. https://doi.org/10.1080/09518960903000751 [details]

    2008

    2006

    • van Gelder, M. (2006). Changing tack: the versatile allegiances of Daniel Nijs, a Netherlandish merchant and information broker in early modern Venice. Dutch Crossing, 2006(2).
    • van Gelder, M. (2006). Thuis in vroegmodern Venetië: woningen en levensstijl van de Nederlandse kooplieden in de Serenissima. Incontri: Rivista europea di studi italiani, 21(2), 161-173. [details]

    2024

    • van Gelder, M. (2024). recensie Drie keer verkocht in een vreemd land. Nederlanders in Noord-Afrikaanse slavernij, 1600-1800. BMGN - Low Countries Historical Review.

    2023

    2020

    2019

    • van Gelder, M. (2019). Stoning the Doge: Popular Aggression and Political ‘Iconoclasm’ in Early Modern Venice. In C. Swan (Ed.), Tributes to David Freedberg: Image and Insight (pp. 279-289). Harvey Miller Publishers. [details]

    2013

    • van Gelder, M. (2013). Gaining entrance to the Venetian patriciate in the seventeenth century: The van Axel and Ghelthof families from the Low Countries. Mélanges de l'École française de Rome - Italie et Méditerranée, 125(1). http://mefrim.revues.org/1201 [details]

    2010

    • van Gelder, M. (2010). ‘Een verlochend Christen [is] een quaetsten Mahumetaen’: Nederlandse renegaten in beeldvorming en praktijk. In J. Schokkenbroek, & J. ter Brugge (Eds.), Kapers & piraten: schurken of helden? (pp. 41-43, 46-49, 52-55, 123-124). (Jaarboek Maritieme Musea Nederland; No. 2010). Stichting Maritiem Museum Rotterdam [etc.]. [details]

    2009

    • van Gelder, M. (2009). Trading places: the Netherlandish merchant community in early modern Venice. (Library of economic history; No. 1). Brill. [details]
    • van Gelder, M. (2009). In liefde en werk met de Lage Landen verbonden: de Genuese koopman en literator Girolamo Conestaggio (ca. 1530 - 1616/18). In M. van Gelder, & E. Mijers (Eds.), Internationale handelsnetwerken en culturele contacten in de vroegmoderne Nederlanden (pp. 43-54). (Publicaties van de Vlaams-Nederlandse Vereniging voor Nieuwe Geschiedenis; No. 8). Shaker. [details]
    • van Gelder, M., & Mijers, E. (2009). Internationale handelsnetwerken en culturele contacten in de vroegmoderne Nederlanden. (Publicaties van de Vlaams-Nederlandse Vereniging voor Nieuwe Geschiedenis; No. 8). Shaker. [details]
    • van Gelder, M., & Mijers, E. (2009). Inleiding. In M. van Gelder, & E. Mijers (Eds.), Internationale handelsnetwerken en culturele contacten in de vroegmoderne Nederlanden (pp. 3-7). (Publicaties van de Vlaams-Nederlandse Vereniging voor Nieuwe Geschiedenis; No. 8). Shaker. [details]

    2007

    • van Gelder, M. (2007). Daniel Nijs. In L. Borean, & S. Mason (Eds.), Il collezionismo d’arte a Venezia. - Il Seicento (pp. 295-296). Marsilio.
    • van Gelder, M. (2007). Giovanni Reynst. In L. Borean, & S. Mason (Eds.), Il collezionismo d’arte a Venezia. - Il Seicento (pp. 304). Marsilio.
    • van Gelder, M. (2007). Luca van Uffel. In L. Borean, & S. Mason (Eds.), Il collezionismo d’arte a Venezia. - Il Seicento (pp. 320-321). Marsilio.

    Membership / relevant position

    • van Gelder, M. (2015-2017). member Scientific Advisory Board, Koninklijk Nederlands Instituut te Rome.

    Media appearance

    • van Gelder, M. (16-02-2024). Jan Jansz. Piraat van de Wereld [Television] NTR. NTR Andere Tijden - Jan Jansz, Piraat van de Wereld.

    Others

    • Noordegraaf, J. J. (organiser), Rasterhoff, C. (organiser), Nijboer, H. T. (member of programme committee), van Gemert, E. M. P. (member of programme committee), Bod, L. W. M. (member of programme committee), Kamps, J. (member of programme committee), Symonds, J. (member of programme committee) & van Gelder, M. (member of programme committee) (28-10-2016 - 29-10-2016). Creativity and the City 1600-2000: An E-Humanities Perspective, Amsterdam. This international and interdisciplinary conference on the history of creativity and the city aims to bring together recent research in the fields of (…) (organising a conference, workshop, ...).
    This list of publications is extracted from the UvA-Current Research Information System. Questions? Ask the library or the Pure staff of your faculty / institute. Log in to Pure to edit your publications. Log in to Personal Page Publication Selection tool to manage the visibility of your publications on this list.
  • Ancillary activities
    • Stichting Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis
      voorzitter
    • Stichting Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis
      voorzitter stichting
    • No ancillary activities