Dr. J.W. Buisman – History of Christianity

Position:
  • Assistant professor of the History of Christianity
Expertise:
  • Early-modern religious mentalities, views of man and nature, historical theology, Enlightenment, prosopography, historical criminology


Telephone number: +31 (0)71 527 2576
E-Mail: j.w.buisman@hum.leidenuniv.nl
Faculty / Department: Faculteit der Geesteswetenschappen, Leids Instituut Godsdienstwetenschappen
Office Address: Witte Singel-complex
Matthias de Vrieshof 1
2311 BZ Leiden
Room number 202B


Dr. Jan Wim Buisman is assistant professor of the History of Christianity, with a special focus on the early modern period. He teaches bachelor and master courses on Medieval and Reformation Christianity. Moreover, he is Book Review Editor of Church History and Religious Culture.            
Jan Wim Buisman studied modern history in Leiden and Paris. Subsequently, he obtained his Ph.D. from Leiden University in 1993, with an interdisciplinary dissertation on the social influence of Enlightened ideas in the Dutch Republic (Tussen vroomheid en Verlichting, 2 vols., Zwolle 1992). He is particularly interested in the impact of natural disasters on religious mentalities. His current research entails a broad study of the history of the introduction of Benjamin Franklin’s lightning-rod in Europe and its important consequences for the perception of thunderstorms on a cultural, technical, ethnological, and religious level.            
During recent years, a further research interest was collective biography. As a Secretary-in-chief of the Editorial Board of the Biografisch Lexicon voor de Geschiedenis van het Nederlandse Protestantisme he produced the 6th volume of this work of reference (Kampen 2006). From 2007 till 2009, he was a part-time assistant professor of historical criminology at VU University Amsterdam.

Selected publications

Books 

  • Tussen vroomheid en Verlichting. Een cultuurhistorisch en -sociologisch onderzoek naar enkele aspecten van de Verlichting in Nederland (1755-1810), 2 vols., Zwolle 1992
  Articles and contributions 
  • 'Het bevend Nederland. De Republiek en de aardbeving van Lissabon 1755-1756', Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis 92 (1979) 20-42 (Fibula van Dishoeck-prize 1978) 
  • 'Quelques aspects sociologiques de la sécularisation dans les Pays-Bas septentrionaux pendant la seconde moitié du dix-huitième siècle: une approche singulière', in: Actes du sixième congrès international des Lumières, Bruxelles 1983 (Oxford 1983) 50-51 
  • 'Some considerations on the social diffusion of Enlightenment ideas in the Netherlands', in: Studies on Voltaire and the eighteenth century, vol. 346-348 (Oxford 1996) 354-357 (Trans­actions of the Ninth International Congress on the Enlighten­ment, Münster 23-29 July 1995
  • ‘Unfähig zu einzig Gutem? Einige Anmerkungen zu den Veränderungen in der Anthropologie der späten niederländischen Aufklärung’, Zeitschrift für Religions- und Geistesgeschichte 57/3 (2005) 265-272 
  • (With J.J.V.M. de Vet), ‘Rede, Openbaring en de strijd tegen bijgeloof: de vroege Verlichting in de Republiek’. In: E.G.E. van der Wall and L.H.M. Wessels (eds.), Een veelzijdige verstandhouding. Religie en Verlichting in Nederland 1650-1850 (Nijmegen 2007) 75-95

Last Modified: 03-11-2010