Koen Scholten MA

PhD candidate

Area(s) of interest: Early Modern History, European History, Identity, Intellectual History & History of Ideas

Cohort/Start PhD: 2017-2018

Mining for learned identities in the Republic of Letters, 1400-1800
Utrecht University

Project: SKILLNET: Sharing Knowledge in Learned and Literary NETworks. The Republic of Letters as a pan-European Knowledge Society
Promotor(es): Dr Dirk van Miert
Aanstelling: vanaf februari 2018

This project is part of the ERC project Sharing Knowledge in Learned and Literary Networks: The Republic of Letters as a pan-European Knowledge Society, and asks how the scholarly networks and community in the early modern period — commonly referred to as the Republic of Letters — formed. In particular, this project focuses on how scientific and scholarly identities were collectively (re)defined, and which ideals of knowledge they stood for. Text-mining early modern correspondences, manuscripts, and other manifestations of memory (such as posthumous editions or scholarly life-writing) will point out if certain memories are shared in particular groups, places, disciplines, or languages. All in all, this project will show how, where, and when the identification with the ideal of sharing knowledge was transmitted through the networks of the Republic of Letters.