Two new board members Division for the Humanities
26 January 2009
The Governing Board of NWO has appointed two new members to the Humanities Divisional Board. They are Prof. A.M.C. (Ans) van Kemenade (with effect from 1 December 2008) and Prof. M.R. (Maarten) Prak (with effect from 1 February 2009).
Ans van Kemenade (1954) is professor of English language at the Radboud University Nijmegen and is also director of the Centre for Language Studies (CLS). Her specialisation is variation and change in sentence structures and, in particular, a comparative approach to the history of English and Dutch. She has published numerous articles and several monographs and is also the editor of several books, the most recent of which was The Handbook of the History of English (2006). She was previously active in various committees of the Division for the Humanities and until 2008 she was chair of the board of the Netherlands Graduate School of Linguistics. She is the principal organiser and chair of the 19th International Conference on Historical Linguistics, which will be held in Nijmegen in August 2009.
Maarten Prak (1955) is professor of social and economic history at Utrecht University and also director of the Research Institute for History and Culture. His specialisation is the social and economic history of towns in the Netherlands and Europe during the early modern period. In that context he has published articles on subjects such as poverty, citizenship, guilds, regents and militia. In 2002, he published the popular volume Gouden Eeuw: het raadsel van de Republiek [Golden Age: the mystery of the Republic]. Gouden Eeuw is also a review volume that summarises the most important historical research from the past few decades. Prak also played an important role in the publication of the general-interest series Geschiedenis van Amsterdam [History of Amsterdam] and Plaatsen van Herinnering [Places of Remembrance].
Prof. Franciska de Jong left the board on 1 November 2008 and has been appointed as a member of NWO's Governing Board. Prof. Roeland van Hout (Radboud University Nijmegen) and Prof. Siep Stuurman (Erasmus University Rotterdam) retired as members of the Humanities Divisional Board on 1 February 2009.
