Nina Geerdink is an early modern literary scholar specialising in Dutch literature from the long seventeenth century. She conducts research into literary patronage in the Dutch Republic between 1550 and 1750.

In her doctoral thesis, she examined the patronage relationship between the seventeenth-century Amsterdam poet Jan Vos and the city administrators. Her current research project revolves around the question of what role patronage (both public and private) played for authors who wanted to earn a living from their work. Traditionally, it is thought that until the seventeenth century, patronage was the dominant revenue model, which was gradually replaced by the market. Nina Geerdink aims to show that revenues from the market and patronage coexisted and intertwined throughout the early modern period, certainly in the Republic, where there was no dominant court patronage. Patronage relationships could benefit the sale of publications to a wider audience, and conversely, a good market position could be important in acquiring and consolidating a patronage relationship. Moreover, all kinds of “hybrid forms” were conceivable, such as crowdfunding avant la lettre, the conclusion of a patronage contract, or incidental patronage, whereby an author wrote on commission for a large group of patrons with whom he or she did not have an intensive relationship.

In addition to the intertwining of market and patronage, Nina Geerdink has a particular interest in female authorship: what role did patronage play in the opportunities that early modern women had to write and publish, and to earn money from doing so? How could women come to the attention of patrons and consolidate their patronage relationships? What role did gender play in the (implicit) negotiations surrounding patronage relationships?

Nina Geerdink has also recently begun exploring the relationship between patronage and the field of the history of knowledge, more specifically innovation: were patrons able to promote innovation through their financial and/or intellectual support, or was innovation actually hampered because patrons restricted the intellectual and creative freedoms of authors?

Nina Geerdink is convinced that an interdisciplinary and diachronic view of all these themes can further the research, and she enjoys collaborating with researchers who study patronage in other countries, genres, art forms or periods.