Martin van Gelderen is Professor for European Intellectual History.
West-Berlin
I started my post-doctoral career in what was still West-Berlin, taking up a position as Wissenschaftlicher Assistent/Assistant Professor at the fine and fairly small history department of the Technische Universität Berlin in April 1989. Working with Volker Hunecke and his team during five exciting years was a special privilege.
Sussex
In 1995 I was offered, to my enormous surprise, the Chair of Intellectual History at the University of Sussex in England. The eight years in Sussex were formative, especially in intellectual terms. Donald Winch was a fine, wonderfully funny and very experienced guide in the labyrinth of Sussex’s university politics. With colleagues and friends like Brian Young, Brian Cummings, Vinita Damodoran, Adriana Bontea, Celine Surprenant and Richard Whatmore, I learnt a lot along the way, especially from the interdisciplinary make up, which was still the hallmark of Sussex during the period I was there.
European University Institute
In 2003 I returned to my alma mater, the European University Institute (EUI) in Florence, where I had obtained my PhD in 1988 under the supervision of Wim Blockmans, Quentin Skinner and my superb EUI-Doktormutter, Gisela Bock. Between 2003 and 2012 I was Professor of European Intellectual History at the EUI.
Within Europe’s academic landscape the EUI is a rare jewel. It stands out in so many ways! Intellectually it is one of those rare places where not only academics from many countries but also their rich diversity of academic cultures come together, cooperate, clash and conflict. Moving to another country, as I’ve experienced several times, obviously means that as a guest you have to adjust to the country and to its academic culture. Moving to the EUI is different. In academic terms no national culture is preponderant; the EUI is a true meeting place of Europe’s academic cultures, an intellectual melting pot.
Management
Somehow, during the last three decades the combination of international academic management and research have characterised my career. At Sussex I was Co- Director (with Norman Vance) of the Graduate Research Center in the Humanities, at the EUI I was Dean of Graduate Studies at the EUI from 2008-2012 and between 2012 and 2021, I was Director of the Lichtenberg-Kolleg, the Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences in Göttingen, which was a unique academic institution, especially within the landscape of Germany’s quite distinct academic culture. At present I am director of the Moritz-Stern-Institut, which has a strong focus on the study of intellectual history. It is fair to say that the closure of the Lichtenberg-Kolleg has enabled me to return more squarely to the life of a scholar.
Scholarship
As to scholarship, the emphasis is still on the history of political and religious thought, in particular on European traditions of republicanism and on debates on religious toleration. Hallmarks, I think, are the four volumes Republicanism: A Shared European Heritage (two vols.) and Freedom and the Construction of Europe (also two vols.) – both outcomes of major international research projects co-directed with Quentin Skinner.
More recently I have been working on a new transcription, translations and scholarly editions of the diaries of Anne Frank. With Frank van Vree I did a small and very fine research project. The lovely 2022 volume ‘Een joods kind dat weet van eeuwen heeft’, presents Anne as refugee, writer and icon. My own research focuses on Anne Frank as writer and reader, living between the worlds of her Frankfurt father and her own beloved Amsterdam.
Federalism
Last year we had the first exploratory workshop of a new research project Civic Culture, Sovereignty and Federal Union: Futures and Pasts of a Shared European Heritage, 1515-2025, which I’ve been setting up with two Dutch friends and scholars, Joshua Livestro and Bert Drejer. As the title indicates, the aim of the project is to combine historical research with contemporary reflections on the current state and future of the European ‘federal union’, mainly from the perspective of political theory, civil society and policy making. Our second workshop Sharing Sovereignty in the Federal Union: Conceptions and Contestations is scheduled for June 2026.
Rembrandt
I am currently working on the monograph Between Erasmus and Rembrandt: Visual and Textual Debates on Republican Politics, which highlights the importance of the interplay between visual and textual political cultures as vital keys to the study of intellectual history in general and of early modern political and religious thought in particular.
My contributions to the volume Rembrandt Radiert, which accompanies the exhibition Weihnachten mit Rembrandt / Christmas with Rembrandt, exemplify my approach in the study of how the interplay between visual and textual sources, pamphlets, paintings and prints, shaped the political and religious debate, to which Rembrandt contributed substantially.
Selected Recent Publications
– ‘Some Have Entertained Angels Unawares’: Citizenship and its Moral Boundaries in Europe’s Renaissance, 1338-1648’ in: Dieter Gosewinkel, Liav Orgad, Federico Tomasello (eds), Drawing Boundaries: Moments of Change in the History of Citizenship, Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming.
– ‘Weihnachten mit Rembrandt: Der radikale Mittelweg eines Künstlers’ in: Martin van Gelderen & Ivan Gaskell (eds.), Rembrandt Radiert: sich Selbst, seine Stadt, seine Zeit, Göttingen: Göttinger Verlag der Kunst, 2025.
– ‘Greek, Patristic and Roman Legacies: Hugo Grotius and the Freedom of Will’ in: Hannah Dawson & Annelien de Dijn (eds.), Rethinking Liberty Before Liberalism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022, pp. 38-59.
– Martin van Gelderen & Frank van Vree (eds.) ‘Een joods kind dat weet van eeuwen heeft’: Anne Frank als vluchtelinge, schrijfster en icoon, Amsterdam: Prometheus, 2022.
– ‘Über Krieg, Gewalt und Tyrannei: Die Bilder des niederländischen Aufstandes von Bruegel bis Goltzius (1558-1590)‘ in: Ivan Gaskell and Martin van Gelderen (eds.), Sturm der Bilder: Bürger, Moral und Politik in den Niederlanden, 1515-1616, Göttingen: Göttinger Verlag der Kunst, 2016, pp. 57-86.
– ‘Hot Protestants: Predestination, the Freedom of Will and the Making of The Modern European Mind’ in: Gijsbert van den Brink, Harro Höpfl (eds.), Calvinism and the European Mind, Leiden: Brill, 2014, pp. 131-154.
– Quentin Skinner & Martin van Gelderen (eds.). Freedom and the Construction of Europe, two volumes., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.
IN UTRAMQUE PARTEM 