Current PhD Research

This year’s edition of the Harvard-based Institute of World Literature programme took place — for the first time online… OSL PhDs Jesse van Amelsvoort (Groningen – Campus Fryslân) and Ahmed Nuri (Amsterdam) took part in the programme, and shared their impressions with us.

This research aims to study and understand the link between European travel chronicles from the 19th century onwards, and how these texts were reproduced by the early Chilean press. The research project addresses the continuities and discontinuities, and the similarities and differences between both of them. 
Chronicle has been traditionally analyzed and differentiated by identifying three essential periods: The chronicle of the Indias from the 15th to 18th century; The modernist chronicle from the second half (and especially the end) of the 19th century; And the contemporary chronicle from the 1960s and 1970s up today. Notwithstanding, some researchers have pointed to a lack of knowledge, especially with regard to the period between the chronicle of the Indias and the modernist chronicle.

Judith Jansma | University of Groningen
In today’s political discourse the idea of a culturally-grounded national identity has made a strong come-back. One can think of Theresa May’s (in)famous  statement that “citizens of the world are actually citizens of nowhere”, or Dutch Christian-democratic party CDA insisting on the integration of the national hymn in the primary school curriculum. Yet this adherence to national identity as a way to deal with complex societal challenges (globalization, multiculturalism) is performed to a much greater extent by populist parties associated with the far right. Their understanding of citizenship being based on the notion of “ethnos” rather than “demos” – leading to a strong “us vs. them” narrative – it should not come as a surprise that culture is an important tool to unite “us” and to exclude “them”.

Kim Schoof | Open Universiteit
In the last decades, the popularity of autobiographical literature has increased in such a way that today, ‘it qualifies as a cultural obsession’. (diBattista and Wittman, The Cambridge Companion to Autobiography 2014: 1) While postmodern philosophy criticized the idea that anyone can attest directly to their “true” experiences in written text, writers – feeling encouraged rather than disheartened – never stopped finding creative and aesthetic ways to do so.

Juan Del Valle Rojas | University of Groningen
My PhD research is mainly focused on the transnational and interdisciplinary dimension of Communication, Power and Technology in the work of Spanish-Chilean playwright José Ricardo Morales. In particular, my goal is to shed light on the problematization of communication processes and power appropriation in Morales’ plays and essays.