prof. dr. C.W. (Mineke) Bosch

Prof. Dr. Cornelia Wilhelmina (Mineke) Bosch

Prof. Bosch is currently nominated for the best Groninger Book with her book Strijd! De vrouwenkiesrechtbeweging in Nederland, 1882-1922. The winner will be announced on Sunday 15 March https://www.noordwoord.nl/bestegroningerboek/

Master's (‘Doctoraal’)

Rijksuniversiteit Groningen (University Groningen)

Date: 26/06/81

Main subject: Nieuwste geschiedenis (Modern History) Doctoraalscriptie/MsThesis (Kossmann): Blauwkousen en hobbezakken in een witte jas. De eerste vrouwelijke artsen in Nederland, 1872-1913 (to be consulted in the IIAV collection)

Doctorate

Erasmus University Rotterdam

Date: 14/01/94 (cum laude)

Supervisor (‘Promotor’): Prof.dr. H. van Dijk, EUR; Prof. dr. S. Sevenhuijsen, UU.

Title of thesis: Het geslacht van de wetenschap. Vrouwen en hoger onderwijs in Nederland, 1878-1948. Amsterdam : SUA. (The gender of science: women and higher education in the Netherlands, 1878-1948)

Work experience

2008-Professor of Modern History, dept. of History, Faculty of Arts, University Groningen

2007-2008 Professor at special chair Gender and Science, Centre for Gender and Diversity, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University Maastricht (1 Fte)

1998 - 2007 (Tenure, 1 fte) Associate professor at the Centre for Gender and Diversity. Managing Director Centre for Gender and Diversity (1998-1999; 2002-2003; 2005-2006; 2008-2009). Supervising responsibilities.

1996-1998 (Fixed term, 0,8 fte) Director of policies regarding equal opportunities and diversity management Maastricht University. Supervising responsibilities.

1994-1996 (Fixed term, 0,5 fte) Project-leader curriculum evaluation Women’s Studies at the Faculty of Arts and Culture, Maastricht University.

1988-1993 (AIO,1 fte) Junior researcher (PhD) Erasmus University Rotterdam.

1982-1988 (Fixed term, 0,5 fte) Project researcher at the International Documentation Centre and Archives for the Women’s Movement (IIAV) in Amsterdam. I initiated and was responsible for a project on the collection of ego-documents by women, as well as the study Lieve Dr. Jacobs (1985). I also participated actively in the development of a separate archives department.

1978-1980 Student-assistant at the Department of Modern History (prof. dr. E.H. Kossmann), University Groningen

I taught many different courses at several levels at University Groningen, Erasmus University Rotterdam, University Bielefeld and University Maastricht. I supervised numerous bachelor papers and doctoraalscripties/master theses.

I have been involved in many PhD projects. I was a member of PhD (reading) committees at the University of Amsterdam, Utrecht University, The Technical University Eindhoven, Radboud University (Nijmegen) and University Maastricht. I am currently supervising ten PhD projects (see Onderzoek). As an editor I supervised a large number of articles and books. I was responsible for (large) projects that had to produce deliverables in the form of reports.

Research Grants, Scholarships

2014 Grant Wallenberg Foundation for SPICE – PhD projects Rozemarijn van de Wal and Anna Cabanel

2011 KNAW Conference grant for the Conference; Gender and the politics of (Auto)Biography, June 2011.

2012-2017 Grant Makaria Foundation for book on Fashion house Hirsch (Femke Knoop)

2010 - 2011 Research fellow Max Planck Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte, October 15 2010-February 15, 2011.

2009 Research Grant of GUF for a project on Frederike van Uildriks (1854-1919); smaller grants from VSB-fonds, GroenmanFonds, het J.B. Scholtenfonds, het Je Maintiendrai fonds, de UB, het UM en de Groninger Archieven.

2007 KNAW translation grant for article in Women’s Studies International Forum

2007 NWO replacement grant humanities (NV-06-26)

2006-2007 Research Fellow at NIAS-KNAW, Wassenaar

2004 KNAW translation grant for an article in L’Homme

2002 NWO subsidy for the conference ‘De ijkpunten geijkt’

1994 Stipendium Prince Bernhard Foundation for Aletta Jacobs biography

1989 DAAD stipendium for three month research stay with Prof. Ute Gerhard, Goethe University, Frankfurt a/M, Germany

1983 Travel-grant from Catharine van Tussenbroek Fonds

Summary of research history (see also Current research)

For current research projects, see Projects

I was trained at Rijksuniversiteit Groningen as a historian and specialised in gender history and gender studies. Important objects of inquiry were from the beginning the historical study of science and gender, and the history of (international) feminism. Besides that I have always engaged myself with theoretical reflections on the practice of (gender) history.

My current research interest focuses on two lines of inquiry: 1) the uses (or politics) of biography in the historical culture of the sciences, combining theoretical approaches to the ‘scientific persona’, mass media representations of scientists and narrative plots in popular and academic biography; 2) women as mediators and agents of change towards individualized society in the twentieth-century. Here concepts such as ‘informal power’, ‘cultural mediation’ and the relation between the personal and the public as mediated through a 'public persona', are used to study women’s lives and women’s organizations in relation to (male) politics, science and society.

‘Egodocuments’ of women

I started my professional career with a self-initiated project concerning the collection and analysis of ‘egodocuments’ (first person accounts and narratives) of women in the International Information Center and Archives for the Women’s Movement (IAV), nowadays Atria, knowledge Institute of Women’s History and emancipation in Amsterdam. A report about this project appeared in the History Workshop Journal.

(International) women’s suffrage movement

As a corollary of the project of collecting egodocuments of women I published (with Annemarie Kloosterman) a study based on the correspondence of women in the International Woman Suffrage Alliance that we came across in the then un-inventoried archives of the IAV in Amsterdam, nowadays Atria. A contextualised and annotated selection of letters appeared as Lieve Dr. Jacobs. Brieven van de Wereldbond voor Vrouwenkiesrecht. Amsterdam, 1985. In 1990 I revised this book for an American publication: Politics and Friendship: Letters from the International Woman Suffrage Alliance, 1902-1943. Columbus: Ohio State University Press.

Biography Dr. Aletta H. Jacobs (1854-1929), and after

Another major historical study came out in 2005: the biography of Aletta Jacobs (1854-1929), the first Dutch woman to become a medical doctor, and long-time (international) suffrage leader, under the title Een onwrikbaar geloof in rechtvaardigheid (A firm belief in justice) Amsterdam, 2005. Recently I finished a project that connects to the biography of Aletta Jacobs and the history of transnational feminism. This project aimed to examine the function and meaning of the use of folklore (in the form of regional dress, dialect language, the staging of clog dances and peasant related narration and pageantry) in Dutch and international suffrage propaganda between 1900 and 1919. As part of theme issue Forging Bonds Across Borders of the Journal of the German Historical Institute at Washington, an analysis of Aletta Jacobs’s role in the transnational transfer of knowledge and practices on birth control was done.  In it I show the difficulty of assessing directions of transfer or priorities across borders of nations that all have their specific reputations at different moments in time. Contextualising the historiography of Aletta Jacobs’s pioneering role reveals that perhaps not Aletta Jacobs, but two male doctors – from Germany and The Netherlands deserve to be seen as the forerunners in this respect. Such insights do not diminish Jacobs’s role, but make history more interesting.

(Auto)biography, life writing and gender history

Already in my dissertation (see under, 1994) I included three elaborate biographical chapters on university women and/or women scientists. From then on I regularly published articles and essays on theoretical issues regarding gender history, (auto)biography and life writing, and reviews of women’s biographies. In 2010 I published an annotated diary titled: De liefde en de vrijheid, natuurlijk! (Love and Freedom, naturally!) Frederike van Uildriks (1854-1919). She was a ‘new woman’ (from Groningen), who transformed from a dutiful daughter and teacher into a radical publicist and a populariser of science.

Gender and Science research: historical and policy oriented

In 1994 I earned a doctorate (cum laude) at the Erasmus University Rotterdam with an investigation of the history of women in Dutch academia: Het geslacht van de wetenschap. Vrouwen en hoger onderwijs in Nederland, 1878-1948 / The gender of science: women and higher education in the Netherlands (Amsterdam: SUA) on the basis of discourse analysis. The focus in this research is on the continuous, but always contextually different and changing discourse on meanings of women, gender and science and the effect of this on women’s personal lives and their careers in science.

Since 1996, when I accepted a position as a gender policy officer at the University Maastricht, I have simultaneously been engaged in (historical and contemporary) research and policy-related studies in the field of women, gender and science for organisations as diverse as the Advisory Council for Science and Technology Policy AWT), the Dutch Organisation for Research (NWO), and the National Forum of Equal Opportunities Officers (LOEKWO). I continued this focus after the foundation of the Centre for Gender and Diversity, where I started to work as associate professor in 1998. In 2000 I took part in the international expert group Women and Science of the European Technology Assessment Network (ETAN group) to write the European Commission’s report Science Policies in the European Union: Promoting Excellence through Mainstreaming gender Equality.

In collaboration with Dr. Ineke Klinge I did a Gender Impact Assessment of the life sciences programme of the Fifth Framework Programme, which involved the development of a theoretical and analytical model. This work was continued in the FP6 project Genderbasic, which has become one of 40 success stories of FP6. For a special issue of Science in Context edited by Londa Schiebinger, I reflected upon ‘the Dutch case’, referring to the fact that the under representation women in academia in the Netherlands seems to be more persistent than elsewhere. For the Technical University Eindhoven’s launch of a fellowship program for women I wrote a popular historical overview of women in the natural sciences in the Netherlands: Curious Careers. An Unexpected History of Women in Science and Technology , Stichting Historie der Techniek, Eindhoven 2006 .

In July 2007 I was appointed to hold the special chair Gender and Science at the Centre for Gender and Diversity, University Maastricht. The inaugural lecture The burden of tradition: gender and the culture of memory in science on October 4, 2007 also functioned as the keynote lecture for the international women and science festival WISER (Women in Science, Education and Research).