Home

Irena Ajdinović (1976) is a PhD candidate at the University of Amsterdam. She studied the English and Dutch languages and literature at the University of Belgrade. In 2001 she was awarded a Huygens scholarship for further study of Dutch language and culture at the University of Leiden.

In the period 2002 – 2008 she worked as a junior lecturer of Dutch culture and literature at the Dutch Studies Department of the University of Belgrade, where in 2005 she also completed her Research Master  on the basis of a thesis entitled Abraham Kemp’s Sultan Osman and the Turkish plays within the Dutch theatre tradition of the seventeenth century.

In 2008 she started her PhD at the Institute for Culture and History (ICG) of the University of Amsterdam, under the supervision of prof.dr. E.M.P. van Gemert and prof. dr. H.F.K. van Nierop. The working title of her project is Four Osmans: Universality and Ethnocentrism in seventeenth century literature.

Irena isa member of the Huizinga Institute for Cultural Studies and the Amsterdam Center for the Study of the Golden Age. She is the author of several papers on Dutch seventeenth century literature and is author and co-author of learning material for non-native students of the history of Dutch literature and culture.

Research interests: The Netherlands in the Early Modern period, image forming, Europe and the Ottoman Empire, cultural identity and literary presentation.