Netherlands: International Perspectives on Sexuality and Gender

Faculty and Staff

Yvette Kopijn, Acting Academic Director
Yvette Kopijn began working with the program in January 2008. In addition to her current role as interim academic director, she provides oral history and interviewing workshops. She is an oral historian by profession. Yvette holds a degree in gender and ethnic studies. She is a PhD candidate at the Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research and is a member of the Amsterdam Research Center for Gender and Sexuality at the University of Amsterdam. Her research focuses on the intersection of gendered survival strategies and constructions of female identity. Specifically, she is examining the influential role that Javanese-Surinamese women play in the survival of the Javanese migrant community and how that affects the ways in which they renegotiate their female identity. Yvette expects to defend her dissertation in mid 2014.

Between 2001 and 2007, Yvette worked with several cultural heritage organizations and conducted different oral history projects, including Haar Geschiedenis ("Her history"), an online collection of life stories of migrant women in the Netherlands that was designed for Aletta Institute for Women’s History. She also worked on Javanen in Diaspora, an online collection of life stories of Javanese-Surinamese people living in Indonesia, Suriname, and the Netherlands. This online collection was designed in collaboration with the Royal Dutch Institute for East-Asian and Caribbean Studies and the Foundation for the Commemoration of Javanese Migration (Stichji).

Yvette comes from a family with diverse sexual and ethnic identities. She was born in Aruba (Dutch Antilles).

Hannie van Herk, Program Assistant and Homestay Coordinator
As program assistant and homestay coordinator, Hannie van Herk handles many of the administrative details of the program as well as finding hosts who welcome students into their homes during their time in Amsterdam. In addition to her invaluable contributions to the SIT Netherlands program, Hannie is also a freelance photographer.

Paul Marlisa, Program Assistant
Paul Marlisa assists with administrative tasks, primarily finances, travel arrangements, and IT/communications. In addition to his work with SIT Netherlands, Paul works as a nurse in the neurologic ward of the AMC, the largest academic hospital in Amsterdam.

Eduard Verbree, Language Instructor
Eduard Verbree is the director of Mercuurtaal, an independent language institute. He is a gifted teacher and tailors the Nederlandse les (Dutch class) to the themes of the SIT program. He also coordinates additional classes and activities on aspects of Dutch culture.

Sudeep Dasgupta, Theory Seminar Lecturer
Sudeep Dasgupta is currently an associate professor in the Media Studies department at the University of Amsterdam. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Pittsburg where his doctoral work examined the role of Hindu nationalism in his native India. He has written widely on colonialism, critical theory, and queer theory.

Kim Herman, Film Module
Kim Herman studied film at the Netherlands Film and Television Academy in Amsterdam. She now works as an independent producer and editor for Fair Film, and for television productions and film festivals handling planning and publicity.

Sampling of additional lecturers for this program:

Gert Hekma
Gert Hekma teaches gay and lesbian studies at the University of Amsterdam's Faculty of Social Sciences. He has published widely on the history and sociology of (homo)sexuality. He co-authored the Dutch Social Planning Office's report on homosexuality Gewoon doen and authored an article in the World queer history Van alle culturen, van alle tijden (September 2006).

André Krouwel, Ph.D.
Dr. Krouwel is lecturer of comparative political science at the Vrije Universiteit of Amsterdam, Department of Political Science, where he also studied political science and public administration and received a degree after completing a study on coalition governments in the Netherlands. Subsequently he wrote his Ph.D. on the transformation of political parties in Western Europe, entitled 'The catch-all party in Western Europe. A study in arrested development', which received the qualification cum laude. Andre Krouwel has published articles and book contributions on presidential elections, political parties, social movements, and political institution-building processes and democratization in West and Eastern Europe as well as on domestic politics and elections in the Netherlands.

Joyce Outshoorn, Ph.D.
Dr. Outshoorn is professor of women's studies at Leiden University, where she teaches in the Department of Political Science within the Faculty of Social Sciences. She is also director of the Joke Smit Institute for Research in Women's Studies at the university. She studied political science and contemporary history at the University of Amsterdam. Her Ph.D. addressed the political debate on abortion legislation in the Netherlands (De politieke strijd rondom de abortuswetgeving in Nederland 1964-1984, Den Haag: VUGA, 1986). She has written on the women's movement, feminist theory, and women's public policy, including editing The Politics of Prostitution. Women's movements, democratic states and the globalisation of sex work, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
She has also been active in the women's movement since its inception in 1970 and has sat on several government committees addressing women's issues.

Peter van Maaren
Peter van Maaren is an educator, activist, and author of Mijn meester is een homo (My teacher is gay). He has led anti-homophobia presentations and activities with minority and migrant youth in Dutch secondary schools.

Nadia Bouras
Nadia Bouras is a Ph.D. student in the History Department of Leiden University. Her research focuses on Moroccan migrants' transnational ties from a historical and gender perspective. She is a member of the Moroccan Royal Commission on Moroccans Living Abroad.

Sara de Jong, Ph.D.
Dr. Sara de Jong obtained her Ph.D. in politics in 2010 from the University of Nottingham where she was based at the Centre for the Study of Social and Global Justice. Her research investigated how women NGO workers in the global North who supported women from the global South reflected on their work practices in light of the critiques emerging from Black feminism, postcolonial theory, and critical development theory, in order to unearth the dilemmas of ‘doing good’. She is research manager and researcher at Aletta, Institute for Women’s History in Amsterdam and affiliated researcher at the Amsterdam Research Centre for Gender and Sexuality. At Aletta, she has, among other things, conducted the sociological research for a project on discrimination against young, second-generation migrant women in Denmark and the Netherlands funded by the European Commission. She has received a two-year research grant (2011-2013) from the Jan van Eyck Academy in Maastricht for an individual research project about the work of the postcolonial feminist thinker Gayatri Spivak. She has taught political philosophy and political sociology courses and has given guest lectures on research methodology, field work practice, and intersectionality theory at the UvA, Amsterdam University College, the University of Nottingham, Trent University, and Maastricht University.

Credits: 16

Duration: 15 weeks

Program Base: The Netherlands, Amsterdam

Language Study: Dutch

Prerequisites: Previous college-level coursework or other preparation in sexuality and/or gender studies, as assessed by SIT. Read more...