University of Groningen

Faculty Member, Modern History

Thesis Title: The Boissevain Sisters. Knowledge and Power on the Threshold of Democracy

About

Esmeralda Tijhoff is a PhD-student at the University of Groningen. Her interests are in the field of gender history and women's history, cultural history, history of communication and media, the history of political culture and the role of networks and friendship. 

She works as an editor for Historica, a Dutch journal for the study of women’s and genderhistory. www.gendergeschiedenis.nl/nl/histor/historic.html
Until 2010, she was also an editor for Lover, a Dutch feminist journal. www.tijdschriftlover.nl


Projects:

PhD project 'The Boissevain sisters: knowledge and power on the threshold of democracy'
Supervisor: prof. dr. Mineke Bosch

The project concerns the role elite women played in the development of social movements and civil society at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth century. This approach offers a new perspective within the study of political culture, family culture, elite studies and women’s history. Its main question is how kinship ties and family networks function as vehicles of personal power and of social and political change by enabling especially their female members to participate in different ways, and sometimes even to take up leading positions.

The project features a group‐biography of the five Boissevain sisters, the international well‐connected daughters of Jan Boissevain (1836‐1904) and Nella Brugmans (1838‐1905). The Boissevain family was a wealthy, influential and extensive patrician family from Amsterdam. At the beginning of the twentieth century they cultivated connections with the worlds of politics and commerce, academia and the mass media. The sisters provide an excellent prism to study the ’politics of family networks’, because for women, family relations were even more important.


Master class 'Biography and History'
Esmeralda participates in the organization of the master class 'Biography and History' and lecture by Barbara Caine on 27 September 2010 at the University of Groningen together with Mineke Bosch.
http://www.rug.nl/gradschoolhumanities/events/biographyandhistory/index


Exibitions
She is involved in the organization of an exhibition on the life and works of Frederike van Uildriks, coordinated by prof. dr. Mineke Bosch.
www.frederikevanuildriks.nl


Oral History
She has participated in a project on the second wave feminist organization Dolle Mina in the Netherlands, set up by the women's archive Aletta.
www.aletta.nu

Contact Information