Dr. N.N.W. (Nadine) Akkerman

Position:
  • Lecturer
  • Post-doctoral researcher
Expertise:
  • English language and culture


Telephone number: +31 (0)71 527 2152
E-Mail: n.n.w.akkerman@hum.leidenuniv.nl
Faculty / Department: Faculteit der Geesteswetenschappen, Institute for Cultural Disciplines, Moderne Engelstalige letterkunde
Office Address: Witte Singel-complex
P.N. van Eyckhof 4
2311 BV Leiden
Room number 1.06a
Telephone number: +31 (0)71 527 2152
E-Mail: n.n.w.akkerman@hum.leidenuniv.nl
Faculty / Department: Faculteit der Geesteswetenschappen, Institute for Cultural Disciplines, Moderne Engelstalige letterkunde
Office Address: Witte Singel-complex
P.N. van Eyckhof 4
2311 BV Leiden
Room number 1.06a
Personal Homepage: hum.leiden.edu/​icd/​organisation/​members/​akkermannnw.html

Fields of interest

Queen of Bohemia 1632-1642

Queen of Bohemia 1632-1642

Manuscript cultures, palaeography, textual studies, women's history, cryptography (secret modes of writing), and Early modern English literature.

One of my main interests is textual studies as I am currently editing the complete correspondence of Elizabeth Stuart (1596-1662), Queen of Bohemia (to be published by Oxford University Press): 

Vol. I:                1603-1631 (forthcoming 2012)
Vol. II:               1632-1642 (published 25 Aug. 2011)
Vol. III:              1643-1662 (forthcoming 2012)  

A Small Research Grant from the British Academy allows the contributors to continue to conduct archival research for this project. The edition is also supported by the Centre for Editing Lives and Letters (CELL), QM, University of London, of which I am an Associate member.

My advisory editors are Prof. Lisa Jardine (CELL) and Dr Steve Murdoch (University of St Andrews).  

See project website


Research

I recently concluded the RUBICON project “Enigmatic Cultures of Cryptography, 1603-1642”. Using the unpublished letters of Elizabeth Stuart, the aim of my research was to analyse what the role of cryptography is in early seventeenth-century newsletters, and to assess what – next to the level of protecting information – might have been other profound reasons for its use. In the first half of the seventeenth century in particular, cryptography also had a social function, to bind members into a group or faction, creating its own secretive language.

From March 2011 to March 2015, I will primarily be working on the VENI project “Female Spies or 'she-Intelligencers': Towards a Gendered History of Seventeenth-Century Espionage”

Prizes

My research activities have been supported, among others, by the Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds, NWO, and the British Academy. In 2009 I have been awarded the Studieprijs Stichting Praemium Erasmianum, a national award, for the completion of an extraordinary PhD in the field of humanities, social sciences or behavioral sciences.

Curriculum vitae

I studied English Language and Literature at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam from 1996 to 2001. In November 2008 I was awarded my PhD in English Literature 'cum laude' (with distinction) for a dissertation entitled, “The Letters of A Stuart Princess: The Correspondence of Elizabeth Stuart, Electress Palatine of the Rhine, and Queen of Bohemia”.
Besides a fully annotated edition of the years 1632-42, my dissertation includes a census of all the letters, either to or by the Queen of Bohemia, many of which are dispersed in archives across the world and mostly unpublished.

Since 1 March 2011
VENI postdoc at Leiden University Institute for Cultural Disciplines

1 February 2010 - 28 February 2011
RUBICON postdoc at Leiden University's Institute for History
 
Since 1 September 2007 –                              
Lecturer, Leiden University  

1 August 2006 – 1 August 2007
Junior lecturer Radboud University Nijmegen  

1 September 2002 – 9 December 2006
PhD student / Junior lecturer Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam

Teaching activities

In the academic year of 2011-2012 I teach Literature 3B, British Literature from Bunyan to Blake, and the MA course on gender issues in the Renaissance, Shakespeare's Sister.

ICD Web Editors
Last Modified: 27-02-2012