perspectives on the world
TRANSCRIPT
Humanities 01
A word from the Dean
Professor W. van den Doel Dean
Preparing for the future. This could well be said to have been the theme for the 2011-2012 academic year. Leiden
University formulated its response to the challenges that were set out in the Dutch government’s Strategic Agenda
for Higher Education, Research and Science. New objectives were defined, for example in such areas as study
success: objectives that will have to be achieved in the coming years. All in all, the profile of the University and
its Faculties has now been given a much clearer definition.
The Faculty of Humanities will focus on Dynamics of Diversity, a concept that encompasses the mobility of people,
language, culture, ideas, art and institutions in a globalising world, and their interconnectivity through the ages.
The Faculty is an international centre for the study of languages, cultures, arts and societies worldwide, in their
historical contexts from prehistory to the present. In other words, the Faculty casts its net wide in terms of cultural,
linguistic and geographical regions and in terms of historical periods. We employ in-depth linguistic, historical and
cultural knowledge, focusing particular attention on the analytical and interpretive power of explicit and implicit
comparison, within disciplinary and interdisciplinary frameworks of theory and method. In disciplinary terms,
we apply a broad definition of the Humanities, drawing no absolute boundaries between the Humanities and
such disciplines as Social Science and Law. Instead we seek synergy.
On the basis of this profile, the Faculty contributes to the themes that typify the University’s chosen profile, namely
the Global Interaction of Civilizations and Languages; The Asian Challenge; Health, Life and Biosciences; and Law,
Democracy and Governance: Legitimacy in a Multilevel Setting. In focusing on this profile, we will apply ourselves
to delivering exciting teaching programmes and carrying out innovative research projects.
These aims apply not only to the future; today, too, all the Faculty’s seven institutes are engaged in exciting and
innovative research. In this publication, four scientists and four master’s students talk about their current research
projects. From Egyptian goddesses and a seventeenth-century print collection to Dutch asylum practice and
Chinese twitter messages: you can read about eight examples of the groundbreaking work carried out by Leiden’s
inspiring Humanities researchers. Together, their activities cover a field of study that encompasses all periods of
human history and has the whole world as its domain.
I hope you will enjoy reading Perspectives on the World.
Wim van den Doel
Dean
HumanitiesHumanities 0302
philosophy in all its facets, in relation to the many disciplines
taught at the University;
• TheLeidenUniversityInstituteforReligiousStudies(LIRS)
includes all religions within its range of expertise.
The Faculty of Humanities is home to more than 4,500 students,
who are able to choose from no fewer than 26 BA programmes
and 36 MA programmes, including research masters. In 2011, the
Faculty’s 700 staff members were engaged in teaching and research
activities based on a turnover of some J 50 million. Between
September 2011 and June 2012, 65 students received their PhD.
World-class researchThe Faculty is ranked among the top five Arts and Humanities
universities outside the English-speaking world. The quality of
the Faculty’s research is recognised internationally, as witnessed
by the fact that our researchers are regularly awarded signifi-
cant national and international research grants. An example is
Professor Willem Adelaar, who last year was awarded an Advan-
ced Investigator Grant for excellent research by the European
ResearchCouncil(ERC).Hereceivedthisprizeinrecognition
of his work on the Amerindian languages of Central and South
America. Besides European subsidies, the Netherlands Organi-
sationforScientificResearch(NWO),too,financesanumberof
Multidisciplinary collaborationThe Faculty of Humanities was formed in 2008. Merging the
diverse departments to create the current institutes has enabled
us to engage in collaboration at a multidisciplinary level and
given us the opportunity to extend our scope beyond the limits
of the former departments. The Faculty’s research activities are
currently structured within seven institutes:
• TheAcademyofCreativeandPerformingArts(ACPA)
focuses on bringing together art and science;
• TheLeidenUniversityInstituteforAreaStudies(LIAS)
combines thorough knowledge of language and culture with
disciplinary approaches from the humanities, social sciences
and law;
• TheLeidenUniversityCentrefortheArtsinSociety(LUCAS,
formerlyLUICD)coversthefieldofliteratureandliterary
studies, the history of art and material culture, and
film and new media studies;
• TheLeidenUniversityInstituteforHistory(LUIH)wasranked
nineteenth in the 2012 QS World University Ranking for
History, and number 1 outside the English-speaking world;
• TheLeidenUniversityCentreforLinguistics(LUCL)brings
together all the Faculty’s linguistic research;
• TheLeidenUniversityInstituteforPhilosophy(LUIPh)studies
Humanities at Leiden University
Leiden’s Faculty of Humanities is an international centre for studying the world’s languages, cultures and nations.
The Faculty’s research stretches from prehistoric times to the present day, and adopts a broad perspective that
encompasses fields as diverse as religion, philosophy, literature, art and technology.
top researchers every year. Its prestigious VICI award, one of the
largest personal scientific awards in the Netherlands, has been
awarded to a Leiden Humanities researcher eleven times since its
inception in 2002. Last year, two Leiden Humanities researchers
received VICI awards: Manon van der Heijden for her research on
women and criminality, and Mirjam de Bruijn for her research
on mobile communication in Central Africa. The contribution of
the Faculty of Humanities plays a key role in positioning Leiden
University among the top three recipients of VICI awards.
Profile themesIn order to facilitate cutting-edge fundamental research at
national and international level, Leiden University has chosen
to focus on six profile themes from among eleven multi-
disciplinary fields of research. The Faculty of Humanities
is engaged in research relating to four of these themes:
• GlobalInteractionofCivilizationsandLanguages
• TheAsianChallenge
• Health,LifeandBiosciences
• Law,DemocracyandGovernance:Legitimacy
in a Multilevel Setting
More about the Faculty of HumanitiesFor more information about the Faculty, its programmes
and institutes, see: hum.leiden.edu.
The recipients of scientific awards are listed at:
hum.leiden.edu/research/hall-of-fame.
A list of candidates who recently received their PhD
can be found at: hum.leiden.edu/research/PhDs.
Subsidies received by researchers are listed at:
hum.leiden.edu/research.
HumanitiesHumanities 0504
Ten years ago, Dr Nadine Akkerman began studying the letters of Elizabeth Stuart, seventeenth-century Queen of
Bohemia. At that time Akkerman was carrying out research for her PhD in English literature; she hoped the letters would
expose an interesting literary network from the period. Instead, she discovered a large number of letters that had little
to do with art or culture but were more concerned with politics and warfare. As a result, Akkerman’s research subject
proved to be an influential, early modern stateswoman.
Boxes and boxes of an early modern stateswoman’s letters
Nadine Akkerman (1978) has by now read around 1800 letters
from and to the ‘Winter Queen’, Elizabeth Stuart (1596-1662).
ElizabethwasthedaughterofKingJames(VIofScotland,Iof
England);shemarriedFrederickV,whobecameKingofBohemia
in 1619. Within a year, however, the Bohemian army had been
defeated and Elizabeth and her husband fled as exiles to The
Hague. Frederick died in 1632.
Akkerman obtained her PhD based on a selection of the letters.
A collection of around six hundred, dating from the period
when Elizabeth was politically active during her widowhood,
was published last autumn by Oxford University Press: The
Correspondence of Elizabeth Stuart, Queen of Bohemia, Volume
II (1632-1642). Akkerman is currently a researcher and lecturer
at the Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society.
A politically engaged queen‘It took a while before I realised I would not be unravelling
literary networks, but that I was actually dealing with much more
interesting material,’ Akkerman explains. ‘When I started, around
two hundred of Elizabeth’s letters had been found. I had hoped to
discover a few new ones, but I actually found a great many more.
And in these letters she only writes about war and the army, about
spies and diplomats.’
In other words, Elizabeth turned out to be highly politically
engaged. This goes against the clichéd image of a queen who
liked romances and plays and cared more for her court with its
monkeys and dogs than for her own children. In Akkerman’s
opinion, Elizabeth introduced the Republic to ‘a true royal court’.
‘She attracted painters, for example, and competed with other
courts in terms of culture,’ Akkerman observes. ‘But at the same
time Elizabeth was corresponding about political matters, trying
to mobilise armies and organising meetings of ambassadors.’
HumanitiesHumanities 0706
Nadine Akkerman
‘Elizabeth had so many contacts that just about everyone who was of importance in the seventeenth century is mentioned in her letters.’
conduct this research. ‘Both the National Archives and the Royal
Archives in The Hague are nearby, and Leiden University is the
only Dutch university to have purchased the British State Papers
(1509-1714) in digital format. We can now easily view these papers
while working in the lecture halls.’
Of course, Akkerman herself has not been inactive either. Two
other parts of the trilogy about Elizabeth Stuart are due to be
published later this year and next year. Her new research project
will subsequently look at women spies in the early modern age.
‘There are already many books about the history of espionage,
but women are conspicuously absent from them. I have found the
names of so many women in the letters, however, that I now need
a database to record them all.’
Standard workIn order to chart Elizabeth’s efforts, Akkerman searched through
boxes full of letters in British and German, as well as Swedish and
American archives, collecting material from 47 different locations.
She is very careful in maintaining a literary approach in analysing
the documents. ‘I constantly take into account questions such
as: how does a text come into existence, who is writing it, who is
reading it, how was it circulated? And, of course, I look at the
rhetoric, which eventually fuses with the content. It is because
of this that the publication, apart from what it reveals about
Elizabeth herself, is of great historical value. It is also about the
oral and epistolary cultures of the period.’
‘Besides, Elizabeth had so many contacts that just about everyone
who was of importance in the seventeenth century is mentioned,’
Akkerman continues. ‘The Thirty Years’ War plays a major role
in the correspondence, and there is also information in it about
the various military skirmishes. Anglophone researchers are in-
trigued, because in many of their court studies there are missing
years in the accounts of the lives of people in exile.’
Akkerman also spent a year studying and subsequently cracking
the coded language she found in the letters. ‘A substitution system
was used in which numbers stood for certain letters: important
figures were also referred to in numeric code. By sharing the key
to the code, the elite created their own language, leading to the
development of political factions. In some letters, only parts were
written in code, sometimes it was only the subject of the letter.
You can then decipher the letter as if it were a kind of puzzle,
while charting social networks at the same time. Other research-
ers can now use these systems for their work.’
Undiscovered research territoriesHaving found through Elizabeth’s letters that particular
women played a more influential role than was previously
thought, Akkerman is convinced that there is a whole field of
research still to be discovered. Leiden is an excellent place to
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Humanities 0908
Daan van Esch (1989) completed a Bachelor’s degree in Chinese Language and Culture. Now he is pursuing his Master’s
in Chinese Studies, specialising in linguistics.
Dialects on “Twitter”
‘Last summer I travelled through rural areas in China. I was
intrigued by the vast differences in language. How great would
it be to do a few months of field work over there? Back in the
Netherlands I learned a new Chinese word, a dialect word. Over
here a Dutch language dictionary will note that a dialect word
comes from the Limburg area, for example, but in China the use
of dialect is discouraged. A Chinese dictionary will say that a
word is part of a dialect, but not which dialect. I wondered how
you would go about tracking the origins of such a word. The next
day I read about an American study that analyses Twitter to see
which words are used more frequently in New York, compared
to L.A., for instance. This type of research is often carried out on
newspaper articles, but Twitter is closer to everyday language. On
Twitter, people don’t just write that they want more democracy;
they also write things like: “I can’t sleep”, and “She doesn’t even
know I exist…” It occurred to me that this kind of study would
also work for Mandarin.’
‘It seemed like a fun experiment; I hadn’t thought of it as a dis-
sertation project at that point at all. Using Weibo, the Chinese
version of Twitter, I obtained five million randomly selected
messages. I then rented a kind of super-computer that can process
this kind of data. After I had written software that could analyse
the use of language in the messages, the computer processed away
for twelve hours. Now you can easily browse through the mess-
ages, and see when and where a message containing a particular
word was written.’
‘You should see this method as a new tool; it allows you to analyse
a lot of data very quickly. First, I tried around a hundred dialect
words; which showed that words which are listed as dialect in the
Daan van Esch
‘Using Weibo, the Chinese version of Twitter, I obtained a selection of five million messages that you can now browse online.’
dictionary are, in fact, often used throughout all of China. I also
looked to see whether certain words may be associated with a
specific city, and ran a list of the five thousand most common
words through the programme, to see if they occurred more in
certain places than others. Besides that, I made the data openly
accessible via a website. Within an hour of sending the link to
a mailing list of colleagues, there were already two hundred
visitors to the website. I also received all sorts of emails in my
inbox. Since then I have received even more reactions, including
from researchers at Stanford. The results of my research show
that this is indeed a good way of identifying dialect words,
but of course there are many more possibilities. This is
just the start of a whole range of things we can do
with this data.’
Van Esch speaks about his research with great passion and
precision(hecalculatedhowmanymetresofbookcasesare
needed to store all the messages in his database – easily 46).
By co-operating with other researchers and with the help of
external funding, he hopes to be able to continue his work
for some time. Technically it is possible to use messages in
the database five minutes after they appear on Weibo.
To him, that sounds fantastic.
Humanities
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have an in-built propensity for violence, according to contemp-
orary philosopher Fukuyama. The – at times – brutal behaviour
of soldiers in war zones is an obvious example of this tendency.
Linguist and experimental psychologist Pinker refers to the “rage
circuit”: people can go berserk and become addicted to violence
and sadism. This is why I also drew on psychology. I related all
these elements to events in the novels Blindness and William
Golding’s Lord of the Flies.’
‘My conclusion: literature is relevant in offering an explanation
for violence and war. It allows us to experience how anxious
people become when there is no government, how people can
become addicted to power and violence and how important
loyalty, compassion and self-control are within society. Through
literature we can understand people’s dilemmas: should I fight or
flee, or put up some resistance? Literature about history allows
us to share these experiences. It acts as a warning; we can learn
from it. In the past, life used to be relatively much more violent.
The reason that levels of violence have decreased, according to
Pinker, is that people have become more civilised and more
intelligent. But literature also plays a role because having the
opportunity to empathise with others helps us to become
more tolerant.’
‘As a teacher, I have always been greatly interested in literature.
I read José Saramago’s Blindness, which is about what happens
when there is no central authority within a society. Groups are
after each other’s blood, violence breaks out. How does that come
about? Why does man have this tendency? Philosophers Hobbes
and Rousseau both believe that we need a form of government
to guarantee safety. Hobbes argues that violence occurs because
of the struggle for land and food, and especially for power and
reputation, whereas for Rousseau, honour and recognition are
the most important causes. Eventually, people who are not violent
by nature begin to turn to violence, too, to protect themselves.
What Hobbes and Rousseau failed to recognise, however, is that
man is also a social being. He doesn’t simply roam around by
himself, shoot an animal when he is hungry and then continue
on his way, alone.’
‘I also started to look for proof of how this sort of thing occurs
in real life by applying insights from archaeology and cultural
anthropology to my research. Both disciplines show that nomadic
hunter-gatherers are in general less violent. The problems usually
develop when people settle somewhere and start owning land.
Actually, there has never been a situation in which people did not
live in groups. However, that does not mean that man does not
Yvonne Hassing (1950) did a Master’s in Philosophy of European Languages and Cultures (Philosophy of the Humanities).
She had previously studied English, Linguistics and Translation Studies and worked as an English teacher.
Hassing enjoys the fact that her research both starts and finishes
with literature. She does not really expect this dissertation to lead
to more extensive academic work; for her the most important
thing is that she has found answers to a number of questions that
had been occupying her for a long time.
Yvonne Hassing
‘Literature is relevant in offering an explanation for violence and war. And empathising with others helps us to become more tolerant.’
Literature of violence
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In her PhD thesis, Murre-van den Berg described the transition of
Aramaic from a spoken to a written language, strongly influenced
by the work of missionaries. Her new book is about the Christian
minority population in the area encompassed by modern-day
Iraq, between 1500 and 1850. ‘There are hardly any archives in
which we can do research, but a great many manuscripts have
been preserved. These are mainly liturgical texts, copied by
scribes, who also left behind a printer’s mark, or a colophon,’ she
explains. It is these colophons that she is focusing on. ‘The scribe
used a colophon to prove that the text was reliable. This means
that there is a name, a date and a place; comparable to how we
sign things.’
Over the years, however, scribes began to include more and more
information. ‘All sorts of adjectives were added and the colophon
became a genre in itself, which is valuable especially in a religious
context. Ruling religious leaders and their place in the community
are described, for instance. Political games were also played in the
colophons, because of the rivalry between leaders and villages.
All of this says something about that time: what was happening,
how did people look at the world and at the role of the Christian
minority in an Islamic society? My focus is on the language and
the dynamics within it; I look at who propagates what and what
kind of texts are used for the different purposes. You could see the
colophons as a route into the culture of the Church of the East.’
Not a lost era The period has a different image from the way Murre-van
den Berg would herself describe it, based on her research. ‘We
Westerners – in fact, Christians in the Middle East just as much
– have the tendency to write off this early modern period as one
in which people were lagging behind; one in which their own
culture came to a standstill, leading to isolation and decline. One
reason for this is that relatively few new texts seem to have been
written, and those that were don’t appear to introduce anything
new. The developments were indeed not rapid, but it is nonethe-
less not a lost era. In fact, it was a crucial period for conveying the
ancient Syrian Christian culture. Without the scribes in Northern
Iraq, many old texts would have been lost.’
‘Besides, this Christian minority was much less isolated than was
sometimes assumed. They had increasing contact with the Roman
Catholic Church, for instance. Thanks to this, new ideas from
Europe about religion, church and society reached Northern Iraq
relatively rapidly. You can find these outside influences in the texts.
Christian tradition in the Middle East
What do language and religion have to do with each other? A lot in some cases, as the research carried out by Professor
Heleen Murre-van den Berg (1964) shows time and again. She herself studied Semitic Languages and has become increasingly
involved in religious studies in the course of her career. With a new book – groundbreaking, according to some – about
the early modern history of the Church of the East, she again takes language and language development as a starting
point for studying and explaining religion. In so doing she is not only charting part of history; she is also helping us gain
a better understanding of recent developments in the Middle East.
Heleen Murre-van den Berg
‘Without the early modern scribes from Northern Iraq, many old texts would have been lost.’
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There was a schism within the minority population, for example:
one group of people wanted this type of contact while another
group was opposed to it.’
‘The’ Christians do not exist Conclusions about how different groups of Christians behaved
at the time can be useful in explaining recent developments
in the Middle East. ‘We often talk about ‘the’ Christians in the
Middle East, as if they live in enclaves, with no wider context,’
says Murre-van den Berg. ‘We either assume that these societies
are highly sectarian, and fail to look at how different groups are
related to one another, or we only see the general picture without
paying attention to the differences. It’s a pitfall I try to avoid. A
story with subtle differences of meaning is, of course, less easily
translated into simple advice on the question of whether or not to
invade Syria, for example. Whatever you answer to that question
is necessarily a political point of view. This is not science with
absolute results. So, what can I contribute? I can provide texts
and explanations about how we should look at Christians in Syria
today. Why do many of them support the Assad regime? Because
of uncertainty about the future, mainly: Assad is also part of a
minority population. But it also has to do with social class, region
and old political alliances, so by no means all Christians feel
the same way about it. History helps us understand why certain
Christians adopt certain positions.’
ExpertiseBecause Murre-van den Berg’s research interacts with so many
academic disciplines, she believes that Leiden is a pre-eminently
suitable place for her work. ‘We have the Institute for Area Studies
with its Middle East department and the Centre for Linguistics
where the focus is on such aspects as sociolinguistics. I myself
work for the Institute for Religious Studies. The Faculty also
houses all the relevant language programmes. I know of nowhere
else in the Netherlands where you can find this much expertise in
one place.’
‘Sometimes it’s easier to do things on an ambitious scale,’ Henley
states. ‘It can immediately yield insights that you don’t get if
you’re concentrating on an individual community or country.
With Tracking Development, as the research programme was
called, we were able to make extremely good use of the resources
and expertise we have in Leiden. The two institutes were involved
in the same kind of questions and topics, building up the same
kind of area-specific, in-depth knowledge.
A joint endeavourAnd so an ambitious project was born. It is Henley’s conviction
that this kind of comparative research has to be based on real
expertise, only obtainable by making it a joint endeavour. ‘Both
institutes have people that have spent their whole professional
lives looking at their respective regions. And apart from the
people, there were also library resources: ASC, like KITLV,
has one of the best research libraries in the world for the region
it specialises in.’
After gaining funding, Tracking Development included, initially,
eight PhD students and a dozen postdoc researchers, contributing
expertise on Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, Cambodia, Nigeria,
Uganda, Tanzania and Kenya. ‘We put students together in pairs
and had them travel to their counterpart countries, so they could
acquire personal experience.’ Henley’s role has been to bring people
together, supervise, organise events, conferences, and discussions,
and also to write and edit publications, of which the last are still
to appear.
Corruption versus rural developmentThe outcomes after five years of comparative research are rather
poignant. ‘There’s a widespread assumption that the economic
Asian successes in poverty reduction
Fifty years ago, both Southeast Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa suffered from severe poverty. While most Southeast Asian
countries have since managed to achieve rapid growth, most African countries have not. When Professor David Henley
(1963) realised that the Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies (KITLV), where he had
been working since 1993, had a sister institute in Leiden called the African Studies Centre (ASC) with the same kind of
expertise on another region, he decided to start an international research programme on the development trajectories
of the two regions.
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David Henley
‘Good governance and the rule of law didn’t have anything to do with development success in Asia.’
problems in Africa are strongly related to institutional failure and
corruption. We concluded quite quickly that this is not true, or
at least not nearly as true as is generally thought. Indonesia, for
instance, at the period of its greatest success in poverty reduction
was also one of the most corrupt countries in the world, according
to the standard indices. In the aid literature and the practice of
development co-operation, there is still an awful lot of emphasis
on good governance and the rule of law – things that didn’t have
anything to do with development success in Asia.’
When asked what does work, Henley names three important
preconditions for sustained economic growth with rapid poverty
reduction. Since the turn of the millennium, two of these have
generally been met in both regions: sound macroeconomic
management and economic freedom for small farmers and small
entrepreneurs. The most important difference between devel-
opment strategies in Southeast Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa,
however, is the much greater priority given, especially in the
early stages, by the Asian governments to rural and agricultural
development. ‘The consistency of that contrast surprised me.
And it is extremely important for the future,’ Henley says.
Practical‘With few exceptions, African leaders are simply not very
interested in smallholder agriculture. And so their efforts to
achieve economic growth are very unlikely to benefit large num-
bers of poor people quickly.’ Why this indifference? Here we find
ourselves in a speculative area, the professor warns. But he does
have an opinion. ‘The Asian states were facing, or had recently
faced, the threats of a communist take-over. The forces of the
Left had drawn most of their support from the rural poor, so
there was a strong incentive for the elite to do something about
the situation of this group.’
‘But I don’t think that’s the whole story,’ he continues. ‘There’s
also a difference in world view at some deeper level. I’d say
African political elites are interested in transforming their
societies, acquiring things that rich countries have: technology,
modernity, knowledge. Asian models of development are much
more practical, not directed at an ideal image of the future.
This yields a much more inclusive development strategy.
The difference probably has something to do with the fact that
the experience of colonialism involved a more traumatic rupture
with the past in Africa than it did in Southeast Asia.’
Nevertheless, the Tracking Development research programme
deliberately did not concentrate on deep historical determinants
of developmental divergence. ‘We’ve been saying that it doesn’t
matter what the past was like; as long as you adopt the right
policies now, you can make a big difference quickly.’ Accordingly,
Henley is now taking his results to a wider audience. Already he
has presented some of the results to the World Bank. In the near
future he and his colleagues will take part in a number of inter-
national events intended to reach African policy makers, spreading
the message about what works in development, and what doesn’t.
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he collected. For most of these prints we do not know who the
designer was, who made them, or when and where they were
pub lished; Thysius unfortunately cut out the images along the
out lines, so that the captions are missing. That makes it difficult,
but also more fun. The print becomes a kind of puzzle. It means
I have to search for stylistic clues, for instance. Sometimes I can
find part of a signature and I then search the reference works to
see whose signature it could be.’
‘Once I have managed to decipher it all, I hope to be able to say
more about Thysius as a collector and about the importance
of the scrapbook within the collection culture of the Golden
Century. Thysius is primarily known as a collector of books, but
among experts he does not have a great reputation as a print
collector. He is thought not to have been passionate enough
about print collecting. My goal is to get a more complete picture
of who he was. In the preliminary study, I looked at how and
why seventeenth century prints were collected and who collected
them. I concluded that for Thysius, collecting prints was not an
overriding ambition, as it was for many other collectors. Thysius
collected prints as a personal passion; he was particularly inter-
ested in French prints and prints that belonged to the moralising
genre. This interest can be seen in the scrapbook.’
‘During my Book and Publishing minor I found a seventeenth-
century scrapbook in the Leiden Thysiana Library. The Library
was established in 1653 as a bequest in the will of Johannes
Thysius (1622-1653). Thysius was the son of a rich merchant, but
he lost both his parents while he was still young. Over the course
of his lifetime he assembled an extensive book collection. The
scrapbook that is central to my thesis – which I am going to
write next year on the basis of preliminary studies I carried out
this year – is an 85-page book in which Thysius pasted the prints
Daphne Wouts (1990) is taking two master’s programmes: Book and Digital Media Studies and the Research Master’s
in Art and Literature. She has already completed a Bachelor’s in Art History and developed an interest in early-modern
printing art and book history.
‘The book is also a bit of an encyclopaedia. The prints depict
flora, fauna and people, and are pasted in a certain order. It might
very well be that with this systematic ordering Thysius was trying
to model a microcosm, drawing a parallel with creation as a
macrocosm. His aim was to understand the world better. Thysius
was an intellectual, whose aim with his collections was to achieve
a humanistic ideal of knowledge. Human development and the
acquisition of knowledge are key aspects here. But I will only be
able to draw real conclusions after I have carried out the study.
Which is what I will be doing next year.’
Over the past year Daphne has come to feel very much at home
at Leiden University. She might do a PhD, but at this point she
has no firm plans. Instead, she optimistically seizes whatever
opportunity comes her way. She might be just as happy in a
museum or a print library.
Daphne Wouts
‘The captions of the prints are missing. That makes it difficult, but also fun. It means the print becomes a kind of puzzle.’
Print collection
HumanitiesHumanities 021020
Sandra Ottens (1967) is taking the Egyptology research master’s, a follow-up on her bachelor’s in the same discipline,
which she combined with a minor in Arabic.
Prophets of fate
‘I am very interested in religion and popular belief. My thesis is
about the Hathors, seven goddesses of Ancient Egypt who proph-
esied fate. There are many depictions of these goddesses; they
appear in relief on the walls of temples and are mentioned in fairy
tales and magic spells. Researchers have listed these depictions in
the past, but the records are incomplete. When I was allowed to
join the professor of my programme early in 2012 on a trip to the
excavation sites of the Dakhla oasis in Egypt, we discovered a new
stone block with a relief of a goddess playing the tambourine.
Only the Hathors are known to have done that. I came across
more depictions of goddesses with tambourines, probably also
Hathors, in another temple in Egypt. I now have a collection
of sixty depictions.’
‘In this overview I describe what is depicted; I note the date and
the accompanying text. My overview also includes a drawing or
a photograph, and a small map. I describe the clothing of the
goddesses and their attributes: possibly a tambourine or a
sistrum, a kind of rattle. I also study the context: what are the
goddesses doing and what is the occasion on which they are
appearing? For instance, in temples the goddesses are often
present at the birth of a god. Sometimes they are also shown
playing music or breast-feeding the child. Their basic function
is to bring good wishes for a long and happy life.’
‘Once I have finished collecting these examples, I will start
analysing them. I want to find out, for instance, how the god dess es
are depicted. Egyptian artists liked to show every detail as clearly
as possible. For them it was important that both the hands
playing the tambourine were clearly depicted. This meant that the
arm positions of the figures shown were sometimes rather
unnatural. This analysis is at least in part about the depictive style
of Ancient Egypt. Another example is that every Hathor has a
different origin: Hathor of Dendera, of Thebes, or of somewhere
else. But these are not always the same seven place names. There
is a lot of variation. These are probably places where there were
Hathor temples. The relationship of the Hathors to fate is also
very interesting. In one preliminary study I analysed how
Egyptians feel about this. My conclusion was that fate is easily
manipulated in Egyptian culture. If you make sacrifices and
exhibit good behaviour, you can give your fate a favourable
turn. Other gods will then be willing to save you.’
Ottens submits modestly to the interview; it’s difficult to explain
to a stranger what is so exciting about a ‘dead’ culture. Her own
‘Egyptoblogy’, dedicated to her excavation exploits and other
Egypt-related activities, bears witness to her passion. She
doesn’t know yet whether she wants to make it her career.
But she will certainly continue to read and write about it,
and maybe teach it too.
Sandra Ottens
‘In the Dakhla oasis in Egypt we discovered a new stone block with a relief of a goddess playing the tambourine.’
HumanitiesHumanities 023022
As every historian - Walaardt included - knows, it is unique to be
given the opportunity to analyse personal files. In many countries,
the use of this kind of source material is simply not permitted.
The difference between this research and Walaardt’s work within
refugee practice is that these files also show the outcome of the
procedure. ‘At the Council for Refugees I helped asylum seekers
prepare for their procedure, whereas at the IND I only saw the
first step in the procedure. I missed the overview: I never heard
what happened to these people in the end.’
The files contain letters to and from the courts, from neigh-
bours, friends and employers, children’s drawings made by little
classmates, country reports and legal documents. Walaardt made
a selection from the thickest files, because he was interested in the
arguments used in lengthy procedures. ‘Many people’s applica-
tions are at first rejected, but in the end it turns out that a high
proportion of them somehow manage to stay.’ Since the 1950s, the
Dutch Refugee Act has formed the basis for Dutch immigration
policy; it states that a refugee who has reasons to fear persecution
in his country of origin may not be sent back. But since the refu-
gee and the people responsible for making decisions in these cases
often fail to agree on this issue, other arguments end up being
Unravelling the arguments in Dutch refugee practice
Dutch immigration policy has for decades been the subject of vehement political debate. Dr Tycho Walaardt (1975)
has witnessed the practice from different perspectives: he has worked as a volunteer for the Dutch Council for
Refugees, as well as for the Dutch Immigration and Naturalisation Service (IND) and the UNHCR in Ghana and Eritrea.
He recently completed his five-year research project with a dissertation for which he studied nearly five hundred
personal files. His conclusion: there is a gap between refugee policy and practice, which allows for the ‘quiet granting’
of asylum applications.
used. These arguments were the subject of Walaardt’s study.
‘I wanted to see whether there was a pattern: what were the
decisive arguments, and did these arguments change throughout
the time period covered by the study?’
Refugees with an identity‘You can distinguish periods during which particular arguments
play an important role,’ Walaardt continues. In buoyant econo-
mic times, for instance, the issue of the labour market is often
used. In the late 1960s, for deserters from the Portuguese army
their leftist image was a key factor. ‘These men were opposed to
colonial warfare. According to public opinion, they were heroes.’
With the Christian families fleeing Turkey, the argument of hu-
manitarianism entered the discussion. “These cases also involved
women and children; in the opinion of many, a vulnerable group.
Tycho Walaardt
‘What is the point of these lengthy procedures if asylum seekers end up staying anyway?’
HumanitiesHumanities 025024
Perspectives on the WorldReflections of 2011-2012
Faculty of Humanities
EditorsJesca Zweijtzer
Lise-Lotte Kerkhof
[Red.] voor tekst en taal, Edith Kroon
InterviewsSchonewille Schrijft, Marie-Louise Schonewille
TranslationAcademic Language Centre, Faculty of Humanities
Portrait photographyHielco Kuipers
DesignRatio Design, Haarlem
Graphic productionUFB / GrafiMedia
September 2012
Despite substantial lobbying by
the church, their cases went on
for years. In the end, they were
allowed to stay on humanitarian
grounds: they had had to wait for
a long time, the women had been
traumatised and the children
had become westernised.’ Due
to the limited availability of
sources, the study only goes up to
1994, but Walaardt sees the same
arguments coming back in the
current debate. ‘Think of Mauro
or Sahar: westernised children, with many sympathisers.’ There
has also been little change in the method of communication used
by the defenders. ‘In the press, asylum seekers become individual
cases with an identity. This has always been a popular strategy;
as early as the 1950s there were campaigns with children’s faces.
If someone is or could be your neighbour, it changes the way
you look at the situation. To proceed with deportation in such
cases, the IND or politicians have to be particularly sure of
their grounds.’
Quiet consentWalaardt also sees little change in the opposition’s arguments.
They focus, for instance, on housing: ‘refugees steal our cheap
houses’. Or on the labour market, where refugees are viewed as
‘social benefits abusers’ or on the other hand, as competition
for Dutch citizens. For some time now, the argument that ‘the
Netherlands is full’ has also played a role. ‘These kinds of argu-
ments are then disproved by the defenders with images of
empty meadows in Groningen and stories about the labour
potential of asylum seekers,’ Walaardt comments.
The mismatch between policy and practice leaves some scope for
resolving difficult cases. The impossibility of deporting asylum
seekerswhosestoriesofpersecutionare(accordingtothecivil
servants)implausiblemeanstheauthoritiesareforcedincertain
cases to grant ‘quiet consent’. Walaardt is critical: ‘What is the
point of these lengthy procedures, if the asylum seekers end up
staying anyway? Take, for example, the Somalis and Iraqis in
Ter Apel, who recently made it into the news. Experience teaches
us that the odds of them being sent back are zero. I would say:
why not look for a permanent solution sooner.’ This is where the
‘honey pot effect’ argument always crops up. ‘But its existence has
never been proved. Imagine that these Somalis and Iraqis were
allowed to stay; in no way does this mean that there will suddenly
be many more refugees from these countries, because it’s not at
all an obvious choice for people to just come here. The journey
itself is a serious selection criterion.’
With the Leiden Institute for History, that specialises in research
in the field of migration history, as his home base, Walaardt
already has ideas for new research. He wants to investigate how
the Dutch Embassy deals with visa applications. If he can get
the funds, he will once again delve into the gap between policy
and practice.
Interested in how civil servants manage to solve difficult cases?
Walaardt’s dissertation, Geruisloos Inwilligen. Argumentatie en
speelruimte in de Nederlandse asielprocedure, 1945-1994, was
published in April 2012 by Verloren.