Pim Huijnen (Heerlen, 1979) studied history at the University of Groningen from 1997 to 2003. He received his MA-degree (cum laude) in the department of Modern History. After working for a short period at the Zentrum für Niederlande-Studien in Münster (Germany), he joined the editoral staff of the news and information website Duitslandweb.nl at the Duitsland Instituut Amsterdam in May 2004. He started working on a doctoral thesis on the history of vitamin research in the Netherlands at the University of Amsterdam two years later (see the PhD Project tab for more information on this subject). He received his PhD on June 24, 2011. Since 2011, he teaches as a lecturer at the University Utrecht and the University of Amsterdam.


Current project: Biland: Heredity, genetics and eugenics in Germany and the Netherlands, 1863-1945

As of March 2012, Pim Huijnen works as a postdoctoral researcher on the NWO/CLARIN funded Biland project. This project focuses on the identity, intensity and location of discourses about heredity, genetics and eugenics in Dutch and German news media between 1863 and 1940. For this, the Biland project aims at developing a specific text mining demonstrator tool for comparative historical research. This should result in an accessible CLARIN compliant web-application addressing research questions for a broader user group of historians. The Biland project is accommodated by the Descartes Centre for the History and Philosophy of the Sciences and Humanities in Utrecht in close cooperation with the University of Amsterdam Intelligent Systems Lab, the Germany Institute Amsterdam (DIA), the National Library of the Netherlands, the Staatsbiblithek zu Berlin, the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek, Huygens ING and the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies.

Recent academic publications

‘The Science of Measuring Vitamins. Quality Control and Competition in the Dutch Vitamin Industry before the Second World War’, in: Heiko Stoff et al (eds.), Biologics. A History of Agents Made from Living Organisms in the 20th Century (London: Pickering & Chatto, forthcoming).

De belofte van vitamines. Voedingsonderzoek tussen universiteit, industrie en overheid 1918-1945 (Hilversum 2011).

‘Het wondermiddel van professor Buytendijk’, Studium 3 (2010) 155-169.

‘L.K. Wolff en de professionalisering van het voedingsonderzoek in de jaren twintig en dertig’, in: L.J. Dorsman en P.J. Knegtmans eds., Het universitaire bedrijf in Nederland. Over professionalisering van onderzoek, onderwijs, bestuur en beheer (Hilversum 2010) 11-23.

‘Zwischen Gemeinwohl und Privatinteresse: Der Wissenschaftler als Vitaminexperte’, in: Nicole Coline (ed.), Forschungsberichte Duitsland Instituut Amsterdam (Amsterdam: Duitsland Instituut Amsterdam 2009) 48-59.

'Universiteit, bedrijfsleven en de opkomst van de beroepsonderzoeker, 1880-1940', in: L.J. Dorsman en P.J. Knegtmans eds., Onderzoek in opdracht. De publieke functie van het universitaire onderzoek in Nederland sedert 1876 (Hilversum 2007) 23-38.

'Paul Ehrenfests Rough Road to Leiden: A Physicists Search for a Position, 1904-1912', in: Physics in Perspective 9 (2007) 186-211 (co-author: A.J. Kox).