A polar vixen in a medieval fur coat sits at a table in a darkish room with chalkboards on the wall containing scientistic scribling. The vixen leans on the table with her right elbow and faces the reader. On the table in front of her are two open books and two steampunk laptop like devices. A lit candle stands to the right edge of the table.

About

Joris van Zundert

Dr. Joris J. van Zundert (1972) is a senior researcher and developer in humanities computing in the department of literary studies and the Digital Humanities Lab at the Huygens Institute of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. His research focuses on computational algorithms to analyze literary and historical texts, and on aspects of humanities information and data modeling. His PhD research in the field of Science and Technology Studies focused on methodological effects of the interaction between software engineers and humanities scholars. He was awarded the title of doctor “cum laude” (with honors) on the basis of his dissertation Scholarship in Interaction in 2022. His computational analytic work focuses on the correlation between text immanent features of texts and sociological processes around the concept of literature. He is also involved in developing computational approaches to stemmatology, narratology, and scholarly editions.

A Short Bio

Joris van Zundert was attracted to the Huygens Institute in 2005 to form a digital humanities research and development group. Subsequently he headed the ‘Digital Humanities Software R&D Team’ from 2006 until 2009. Between 2009 and 2012 he was the appointed project manager of the Royal Academy’s Alphalab project—a cooperative project by six Royal Academy institutes to determine the requirements of a digital infrastructure for humanities and to explore and test drive the possibilities of computational humanities for that field. In 2007 he also became Chair of the European funded Interedition project, which grew into a European/US initiative to foster interoperability and collaboration in tool development for digital textual scholarship. In 2012 he was added to the management team of the Huygens Institute for the History of the Netherlands and became responsible for the 3 year Methodology research programme aimed at integrating suitable digital tools and techniques into the humanities methodological approaches. Since 2016 he is full senior researcher in the department of Literary Studies of the same institute.

Joris van Zundert studied Dutch literature and linguistics at the University of Utrecht (The Netherlands) and specialized in historical literature. He graduated on the adaptation of the Dutch medieval romance or fable Of Reynaert the Fox for an animation screenplay. (On Reynaert see also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reynard). In a commercial venture he produced several successful digital publications and corporate web sites. He was employed as coordinator of IT operations at WeTeN, a Dutch governmental supported foundation for the popularization of science. He moved on to become an expert of IT applications in the humanities at the department of history of the meanwhile dissolved Dutch Institute for Scientific Information Technology Services (NIWI – KNAW). Subsequently he was employed as scholar and IT expert at the department of Dutch Literature and Linguistics at the same institute.

Joris van Zundert was born in Goirle and during his youth and adolescence lived in Tilburg in the south of the Netherlands. He has a deep interest in computing, medieval history and in literature. He has a disaffection of all procedures, authority and organizational structures that inhibited curious exploration, creative thinking, and pragmatic innovation. He is fond of literature, art, music, and movies that surprise and venture beyond the comfort zone, yet is also a great admirer of mindless brain candy and soccer. He’s a slow but devoted ice skater, an interested and acceptable cook, a cognoscente of red wine, a reasonable archer on the recurve bow. He travels many a place, yet finds himself returning to Bolsena, Italy most every summer to read, eat, drink and swim. He collects trivia regarding foxes. He is married to Leentje Savelsberg, and has the best daughter in the world. He lives in the city of Utrecht in the Netherlands.

Joris van Zundert

A Short Bio

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