Dr. Katherine van Liere
Biography
I love to travel, hike, bicycle, backpack, swim, sail, and kayak. I also enjoy music, cooking, corresponding with old friends, practicing foreign languages (especially Spanish and Dutch), and reading.
Education
- B.A., History of Ideas, Williams College
- M.A., History, Cambridge University
- Ph.D., European History, Princeton University
Academic Interests
Kate van Liere's interests include early modern European cultural and religious history; Renaissance humanism; history of scholarship; historiography; history of Spain; and museums and public history. Her current research focuses on the writing of national history and “sacred history” (stories of saints, miracles, and other religious phenomena) in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spain.
Kate van Liere has also taught Spanish 308 and Dutch 102 at Calvin. She directs the history department's internship program and serves as a board member of the Greater Grand Rapids Women's History Council. She co-directed the Semester in Britain program in 2009 and 2019, along with her husband Frans van Liere.
Read Kate van Liere's posts on Historical Horizons, the history department blog
Research
In July 2016, Kate van Liere co-directed an NEH Summer Institute at Calvin, along with the Meeter Center's Karin Maag, on "Teaching the Reformation after Five Hundred Years."
She was on sabbatical leave in Princeton, New Jersey for the 2012-2013 academic year, researching and writing a book on the Spanish historian Ambrosio de Morales and the development of humanist scholarship, Christian thought, and history writing in sixteenth-century Spain.
Publications
