Album amicorum : Lotte Jensen

This section of our website serves as a kind of virtual ‘album amicorum’, for which we ask external scholars involved in our project to answer a short questionnaire.

Lotte Jensen, full professor of Dutch Cultural and Literary History at the Radboud University Nijmegen, is a member of our project’s scientific committee. She will participate as a respondent in our Kickoff (15-17 May). Professor Jensen’s research focuses on themes like disasters, national identity, peace and war. She is currently involved in the project Adapt! Lessons for dealing with tomorrow’s crisis.

For starters: what is the place of the notion of the present in your everyday life as a researcher?

As a researcher I read many books from the 18^th and 19^th century. While reading them, you can never escape entirely from the present day perspective, in the sense that present day perspectives and your current state of knowledge play a role in the interpretation of these sources.

What is your expertise and in what way does your research engage with the notions of time, temporality and/or the present?

My main field is Dutch literary and cultural history. I engage with topics such as war and peace, national identity, disasters and crises from a longitudinal perspective (17^th century – present day). Two modes of time nearly always play a role: what continuities and changes can be witnessed over time with regard to those topics, and: how does history relate to present day concerns or even future concerns. To give one example: there are many continuities in the way the Dutch have dealt with disasters, in particular floods. The past still shapes present day narratives and even our projections onto possible future catastrophes.

What kind of sources do you use in your research on time, temporality and/or the present?

Poems, stories, material objects, paintings, visual imagery.

Whose ‘present’ or ‘temporality’ are you particularly interested in, in your research? 

I am most interested in how history helps us understand current day developments, so the ‘present’ refers to the times we live in now.

Are there any specific theorists about time that you are particularly drawn to? And/or: Have you recently encountered another project or researcher who is of particular interest regarding this topic?

Future collective thought is very much anchored in representations of the past (Szpunar and Szpunar), and in commemorative practices. Memory scholars are very relevant here (Ann Rigney, Astrid Erll etc).

Do you think it is possible to speak of a shared perception of time or of the present at a specific historic moment (one of our research questions)?

Yes, at certain events where many poets/poems/authors express their feelings about the same event you can distill certain trends (eg. celebrations of the Treaty of Munster, 1648).

Which three terms come to mind when you think about the ‘present’ of people in Northwestern Europe between the fourteenth and seventeenth century? 

War, peace, daily life

Finally, what would be your ‘research utopia’ if finances and time were not an issue?

Creating an interactive on the history of disasters and (memory) traces of disasters for the Netherlands.

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