Classicist Ineke Sluiter KNAW president
Leiden professor Ineke Sluiter was appointed president of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) on 1 June. She was presented with the gavel by her predecessor Wim van Saarloos.
Sluiter will hold the position for two years. She has been Vice-President of the KNAW for the past two years. She is now taking over the role from Wim van Saarloos, Professor of Theoretical Physics at Leiden University.
Ineke Sluiter (1959) has been Professor of Greek Language and Literature at Leiden University since 1998. Her research focuses on language, literature and public discourse in classical antiquity. She links the concerns and interests of the ancient world to those of the present day, such as freedom of speech, education and cultural identity.
From 2000 to 2011, she was the academic director of OIKOS, the national research school for classical studies in the Netherlands. There she was the initiator of the Anchoring Innovation programme, which studies how innovation processes unfold and how societies come to accept innovation. Sluiter heads this national programme, the first Humanities project to be awarded a Gravitation Grant. She is also one of the founders of Athena’s Angels, four female professors who have joined together to advocate equal opportunities for women in academia. She also regularly seeks to improve the position of young researchers.
Ineke Sluiter received the Spinoza Prize from the Dutch Research Council in 2010 as well as the KNAW’s Academy Professors Prize. She is a member of the KNAW, the Royal Holland Society of Sciences and Humanities and the Academia Europaea, and is also a corresponding fellow of the British Academy.