Notes on Contributors
Marijke J. Blankman (*1948) studied Dutch Language and Literature (cum laude 1988), University of Amsterdam, with a specialization in Historical Literature. She contributed to several books on Early Modern Dutch literature and served as picture editor for similar publications. From 2006 till her retirement in 2013 she worked as co-ordinator of Internal Communications at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.
Jan Pieter Hendrik (Piet Hein) Donner (*1948) began his career as a civil servant in the Ministry of Economic Affairs and then in the Ministry of Justice. He was a member and chairman of the Scientific Council for Government Policy and joined the Council of State in 1998. From 2002 to 2011 he was, with a yearâs interruption during which he was a member of the House of Representatives, successively Minister of Justice, of Social Affairs and Employment, and of Home Affairs. In 2012 he returned to the Council of State as vice president until he reached the upper age limit in 2018. He fulfils various other functions including the chairmanship of the Interchurch Council in Government Affairs and membership of the scientific board of the T.M.C. Asser Institute.
Cis van Heertum (*1958) read English literature at Nijmegen under Professor T.A. Birrell and had the wistful pleasure of being the last of his PhD students (doctorate degree 1989). She worked as a curator in The British Library in 1990â1991, then joined the staff of the Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica in Amsterdam. Her main responsibilities in this library are curatorial and editorial. Since 2011 she has also worked as a translator and editor, specializing in book history and art history.
David Kromhout (*1976) studied Hebrew and Jewish Studies with minors in Greek, Latin and Arabic at the University of Amsterdam. His research interest is the intellectual world of the long seventeenth century, with emphasis on the dynamics of intercultural and inter-confessional exchange. He wrote a dissertation on the Synod of Dort (1618) as a foucauldian event and its repercussions on the literary discourse of the Leiden humanists. Presently, he is a teacher of Classics at the Stedelijk Lyceum in Zutphen.
Adri K. Offenberg (*1939) studied Dutch Philology, Bibliology, and Hebrew and Danish language at the University of Amsterdam. He joined the staff of the Bibliotheca Rosenthaliana, University of Amsterdam, in 1965 and was curator from 1974 to his retirement in 2004. He was editor-in-chief of Studia Rosenthaliana from 1987 to 2004 and of the volume Bibliotheca Rosenthaliana. Treasures of Jewish Booklore (Amsterdam, Amsterdam University Press 1994). He works mainly in the field of Jewish bibliography with emphasis on Hebrew incunabulistics and Jewish printers and authors in Amsterdam. He authored several books and articles in various scholarly journals, among which many on early modern Sephardic Amsterdam.