Team

Sharing a great passion for seventeenth-century microscopes, microscopy and microscopists, and their representations of the microworld, our international team connects skills and knowledge from various disciplines. And from different institutional and educational backgrounds: during the MicroLabs (2021-2023) entomologists and museum-curators participated. The current VisionLabs – with their focus on representation – proudly includes artists, historians of art and of the book. We are all fascinated by the fluent boundaries between art and science, between knowing and doing, between thinking and creating. We humble ourselves in the face of the pioneering work our protagonists did in early modern Europe – they had no clue as to where to look and how to interpret what they saw – which we can only try to reconstruct and understand, anno 2024.

We are honoured to cooperate with experts on specific topics from all over the world, including the nine distinguished members of our Advisory Board.

Background image: Parts of a bee, as seen through a Van Musschenbroek microscope, magnification 30x. Cat. nr. V07512. Rijksmuseum Boerhaave © Wim van Egmond for Visualizing the Unknown
Eric Jorink

Project Leader
Prof. dr. Eric Jorink
Teylers Chair Leiden / Senior Researcher Huygens Institute (KNAW)
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Tiemen Cocquyt

Second Project Leader
Dr. Sietske Fransen
Research Group Leader Bibliotheca Hertziana – Max Planck Institute for Art History
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Project Leader MicroLabs
Drs. Tiemen Cocquyt
Curator Rijksmuseum Boerhaave
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Mieneke te Hennepe

Team Member MicroLabs
Dr. Mieneke te Hennepe
Curator Rijksmuseum Boerhaave / Assistant Professor Leiden University Medical Center
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Tim Huisman

Team Member MicroLabs
Dr. Tim Huisman
Curator Rijksmuseum Boerhaave
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Team Member MicroLabs
Wim van Egmond
Microphotographer
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Frank van Campen

Team Member MicroLabs
Frank Van Campen
Microscopist, microscopic techniques
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Hans Huijbregts

Team Member MicroLabs
Hans Huijbregts
Entomologist

Ellen Pater

Team Member
Ellen Pater
PhD Huygens Institute (KNAW) / Leiden University

Team Member
Geertje Dekkers MA
Biographer Antoni van Leeuwenhoek
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Johannes Swammerdam, Icones operis Bibliae naturae, 1675. Detail from fol. 26r. BPL 126 B. Leiden University Library
Johannes Swammerdam, Drawing in Icones operis Bibliae naturae, 1675. Fol. 26r. BPL 126 B. Leiden University Library

Team Member
Prof. dr. Erma Hermens
Director Hamilton Kerr Institute, Fitzwilliam Museum Cambridge
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Larissa van Vianen, door Fred Ernst

Team Member
Larissa van Vianen
Intern Huygens Institute (KNAW) / University of Amsterdam

Advisory Board

Dr. Jan de Hond
Rijksmuseum Amsterdam

Keith Moore
Royal Society, London

Prof. dr. Pamela J. Smith
Columbia University, New York

Prof. dr. Sachiko Kusukawa
Trinity College,  Cambridge

Prof. dr. Kay Etheridge
Gettysburg College, Pennsylvania

Prof. dr. Christoph Lüthy
Radboud University, Nijmegen

Prof. dr. Ann-Sophie Lehmann
Rijksuniversiteit Groningen

Prof. dr. Matthew Cobb
University of Manchester

Prof. em. dr. Joanna Woodall
Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London