Paul Bijl is a tenured assistant professor at the Faculty of Humanities of the University of Amsterdam and an affiliated fellow of KITLV/Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies in Leiden. He was educated as a literary scholar at VU University Amsterdam (MA 2003) and Utrecht University (RMA 2005; PhD 2011). In 2004-2005 and 2008 he studied at UCLA and Columbia University as a visiting graduate student. He has also been a visiting scholar at Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (October 2014), when he did research at the UNESCO Library and Archives. In May 2015 he will be a visiting scholar at Universitas Gajah Mada in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. In his research he focuses on colonial and postcolonial European and Indonesian literature, culture and cultural memory. His research interests include photography & visual culture, the histories of gendering and racialization and (human) rights. 

In the period February 2015-February 2019, he is a postdoctoral researcher on an NWO Veni Grant. His project maps the transnational circulation of the writings of the Javanese author Kartini (1879-1904) whose letters were appropriated by institutions and actors in Southeast Asia (Indonesian nationalism, the Indonesian postcolonial state), Europe (European colonialism, Dutch multiculturalism), and transnationally (UNESCO, women's movements) to articulate their position on the role of 'native', Indonesian, Asian and migrant women in (post)colonial society. He is currently working on Kartini's initial appropriation and race critique of European feminist rights talk and the religious alternative to the idea of individual, secular rights she later developed. 

Out now:

Emerging Memory: Photographs of Colonial Atrocity in Dutch Cultural Remembrance

In this book I analyze how it is possible that in the pas century the Netherlands has kept on rediscovering its history of violence in colonial Indonesia. The book describes the social life in the Netherlands of two photographs of colonial atrocity, made in the Alas land (Sumatra) in 1904. 

Workshop "Colonial Ruin: (In)Visible Sites of Postcolonial Memory"

On 25 and 26 June 2015 my colleague David Duindam and I will organise a workshop "Colonial Ruin: (In)Visible Sites of Postcolonial Memory" at the University of Amsterdam, which is funded by the Amsterdam Center for Cultural Heritage and Identity (ACHI), the International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS), the Amsterdam Center for Contemporary European Studies (ACCESS Europe), and the Department of Dutch Studies at UvA. The workshop is closed. 

Speakers are:

Veni Research Project: The Transnational Circulation of Kartini's Letters (2015-2019)

Clockwise, starting upper west side: 1. Kartini around 1900; 2. First Dutch edition 1911; 3. UNESCO English edition 1964; 4. Indonesian edition 2000s; 5. Protest against Sexual Violence on Kartini Day 2013 in Jakarta; 6. Asian Women's Network Kartini; 7. Kartini Prize The Hague.

Recent and Upcoming Publications

• Emerging Memory: Photographs of Colonial Atrocity in Dutch Cultural Remembrance. Amsterdam: Amsterdam UP, 2015.

• "Saving the Children? The Ethical Policy and Photographs of Colonial Atrocity during the Aceh War." Photography, Modernity and the Governed: Re-viewing the ‘Ethical’ Era in Late-Colonial Indonesia. Ed. Susie Protschky. Amsterdam: Amsterdam UP, 2015.

• "Colonial and Postcolonial Silences: Listening to Kartini in the Netherlands." Beyond Memory: Silence and the Aesthetics of Remembrance. Eds. Alexandre Dessingué and Jay Winter. London: Routledge, 2015.

• "Colonial Memory and Forgetting in the Netherlands and Indonesia." Colonial Counterinsurgency and Mass Violence: the Dutch Empire in Indonesia. Eds. Bart Luttikhuis and Dirk Moses. London: Routledge, 2014.

• "Colonial Nostalgia Across Decolonization." Journal of Dutch Literature 4.1 (2013).

• "Colonial Memory and Forgetting in the Netherlands and Indonesia." Journal of Genocide Research 14.3-4 (2012): 441-61.

• "Embodying Colonial Photography: Remembering Violence in Tabee Toean." Depth of Field 1.1 (2011).

• "Old, Eternal and Future Light in the Dutch East Indies: Colonial Photographs and the History of the Globe." Mediation, Remediation and the Dynamics of Cultural Memory. Eds. Astrid Erll and Ann Rigney. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2009. 49-66.

 Research Networks

• I am a member of the management committee of COST action In Search of Transcultural Memory in Europe (ISTME). COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology) is a European framework supporting cooperation among scientists and researchers across Europe. The network has had meetings in Brussels, Copenhagen, Krakow, Skopje, Budapest and Kaunas and will meet in 2015 and 2016 in Dubrovnik, Sofia and Dublin.

• At the University of Amsterdam, I am am member of the Amsterdam Center for Cultural Heritage and Identity (ACHI) specifically within the research domain "Heritage and Memory of Conflict". 
• I am a member of the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis (ASCA) at the University of Amsterdam and I work within the following research groups: Literature in the World (ASCA), The East and Europe (ARTES), Postcolonial Heritage, Memory and Identity (ASHMS), Emotion and Subjectivity, 1300-1900 (ASCH), Cultural Memory, Rhetoric, and Literary Discourse (ASCH) and Transnational Memories (ASHMS).

Grants, Visiting Scholarships, Education

- Visiting scholar at Universitas Gajah Mada in Yogyakarta, Indonesia (May 2015)

- Affiliated Fellow at KITLV/ Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies in Leiden (2015-2019) 

- NWO Veni Grant (February 2015 - February 2019)

- Visiting Scholar at Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (COST STSM Grant, October 2014). Research at UNESCO Library and Archives

- Visiting Scholar at Columbia University in the City of New York (January - June 2008)

- PhD degree in Literary Studies within the NWO project The Dynamics of Cultural Remembrance: An Intermedial Perspective (2006-2010). The leader of this project and my supervisor was prof. dr. Ann Rigney of Utrecht University. My project was also supervised by prof. dr. Frank van Vree of the University of Amsterdam.

- Visiting Graduate Student at University of California, Los Angeles (VSB Grant, October 2004 - March 2005)

- Research MA degree in Literary Studies (Utrecht University, 2005, with prof. dr. Ann Rigney, cum laude) and MA degree in Dutch Studies (VU University Amsterdam, 2003, with prof. dr. Dick van Halsema, cum laude) 

PhD Supervision

- Lisanne Snelders: The Dynamics of Literary Heritage: The Case of the Dutch East Indies. Together with Thomas Vaessens and Yra van Dijk.

RMA Supervision

- Hedwig de Coo: Narrativity in Reports of the Eichmann Trial (on Hannah Arendt and Harry Mulisch, 2014).  

MA and BA Supervision

- Anna Thoolen: Colonial Scandal en Anxiety (on M.H. Székely-Lulofs's Rubber, MA 2014)

- Yves Otten: African Voices in Contemporary Literary History (on David van Reybrouck's Congo, MA 2014)

- Hedda Stubbe: Transgender Discourse in the Netherlands (on Maxim Februari's De maakbare man, MA 2014)

- Ida Bartelds: Theatre and Colonial Memory in the Netherlands and Belgium (on Ger Thijs and David van Reybrouck, MA 2013)

- Daphne van Rijssel: Generations in Colonial Memory (on Marion Bloem, MA 2013)

- Marije Vos: Young Adult Literature in the Field of Cultural Production (MA 2013)

- Annegrietje Franssen: Indonesian Literature and Official History on the Indonesian Revolution (on Pramoedya Ananta Toer and Y.B. Mangunwijaya, BA 2013)

- Maria Kraaijkamp: Motherhood in Early Twentieth-Century Novels for Girls (on Top Naeff, Diet Kramer and Cissy van Marxveldt, MA 2012)

Courses 

BA courses at University of Amsterdam

- Introduction to Literary Theory (BA-1, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015...). Together with Jef Bogman (2011-2014), Femke Essink (2012-2013), Thomas Vaessens and Anouk Zuurmond (2012). 

- Dutch Literary History 19th & 20th centuries (BA-1, 2011, 2012). Together with Jan Rock and Thomas Vaessens.

- Literature, Modernity and Gender (BA-1, 2013, 2014). Together with Edwin Praat and Thomas Vaessens.

- Postcolonial Theory (BA-2, 2012). 

- Narrative: Text, Film and Photography (BA-3, 2013, 2014). Together with Yra van Dijk (2013), Femke Essink and Jan Rock.

MA course at University of Amsterdam 

- World Literature: The Circulation of Colonial Texts in Postcolonial Worlds (MA, 2013, 2014). Together with Stephan Besser (2013).

RMA course at University of Amsterdam 

- Research Seminar Memory Studies (RMA, 2013). Guest lectures.

PhD courses

- Organization of PhD Winter School on Globalization for OSL/Netherlands Research School for Literary Studies (2009) at Radboud University Nijmegen. Together with Suzanne Fagel, Dennis Kersten and Willemijn van der Linden. Guest lectures.

- Organization of PhD Course Humanities: the Basics for OSL/Netherlands Research School for Literary Studies (2009-2010) at Utrecht University. Guest lectures.

- Hermes PhD Summer School on Literature and Intervention (2012) at University of Amsterdam. Organized together with Gaston Franssen and Thomas Vaessens. Guest lectures.

- COST PhD Training School In Search of Transcultural Memory in Europe (2013) at University of Copenhagen. Organized by Tea Sindbaeck. Together with Heiko Pääbo, Aline Sierp, Tea Sindbaek and others.

Guest Lectures at University of Amsterdam:

- in History, Cultural Memory and Trauma (MA course by Boris Noordenbos, 2014) 

- in Literary Studies in the 21st Century (RMA course by Ellen Rutten, 2014, 2015)  

- in Heritage Studies: Amsterdam in a Global Context (RMA course by Julia Noordegraaf and Thijs Weststeijn, 2015) 

- in Research Seminar Literature in the World (RMA course by Willemijn van der Linden and Gaston Franssen) 

At Utrecht University (2010-2011):

- European Literary History 19th & 20th centuries (BA-1). Together with Barnita Bagchi.   

- Narratology (BA-1). 

- Narrative Across Media (BA-2/3). Together with Sanne Koevoets. Guest lectures. 

- Potentiality and Actuality in Modern Western Literature (BA-2/3). Together with Bram Ieven. 

• No ancillary activities