Herman Paul is Professor of the History of the Humanities. He currently serves a three-year term (2025–8) as academic director of the Leiden University Institute for History. In 2024, he was elected a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW).

More information about Herman Paul

News

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  27 February 2025 Herman Paul new Scientific Director of the Institute of History: ‘A good working atmosphere is important’
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  18 June 2024 Academic freedom report: ‘This jewel in our crown deserves better care’
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  01 June 2022 Ethics and student research: 'Students have the same questions as researchers'
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  11 June 2021 Critical thinking? Or rather generous thinking?
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  26 February 2019 Early-modern vices: why are they still around? Vici grant for Herman Paul
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  26 February 2019 Seven Leiden researchers win €1.5m Vici grant
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  11 December 2018 Herman Paul appointed Professor of History of the Humanities
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  20 June 2017 Succesful workshop 'Traditions of Authority'
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  04 April 2017 Call for Papers 'Epistemic Vices: Continuities and Discontinuities, 1600-2000'
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  07 March 2017 ZonMw Grant for Project on Competitive Research Funding
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  11 February 2016 Call for papers for conference 'The Persona of the Historian: Repertoires and Performances, 1800-2000'
• 01 December 2015 Thorbecke Fund Grant for Herman Paul
• 22 May 2013 Three VIDI Grants for Humanities researchers

PhD candidates

• 
  Lucas Gahrmann PhD candidate
• 
  Anne Por PhD candidate
• 
  Edurne de Wilde PhD candidate

Herman Paul is Professor of the History of the Humanities. He currently serves a three-year term (2025–8) as academic director of the Leiden University Institute for History. In 2024, he was elected a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW).

His research interests lie at the intersection of the history of the humanities, intellectual history, cultural history, and historical theory. With “Vidi” and “Vici” grants from the Dutch Research Council (NWO), Paul has done pioneering work on the history of scholarly virtues and vices. He is currently wrapping up this line of research while laying the foundations for a new project on the history of the humanities.

Paul’s English-language books include Hayden White: The Historical Imagination (2011), Key Issues in Historical Theory (2015, rev. ed. forthcoming), Historians’ Virtues: From Antiquity to the Twenty-First Century (2022), Dogmatism: On the History of a Scholarly Vice (2024, co-authored with Alexander Stoeger), Virtues and Vices in the Nineteenth-Century Humanities: Explorations of a Discourse (2025), and History of Humanities: A New Field of Study (forthcoming).

He also published several books in Dutch: Het moeras van de geschiedenis: Nederlandse debatten over historisme (2012), Als het verleden trekt: kernthema’s in de geschiedfilosofie (2014, rev. ed. 2024), and De deugden van een wetenschapper: karakter en toewijding in de geesteswetenschappen, 1850–1940 (2018).

Paul received his Ph.D. degree (2006, cum laude) from the University of Groningen, where he studied with Frank Ankersmit. He held visiting positions in Princeton (2006–7), Leuven (2008), Mainz (2009), and Berlin (2016) and was professor by special appointment at Groningen (2012–20). From 2013 to 2018, he was a member of The Young Academy (KNAW).

Paul has supervised Ph.D. projects in the history of scholarly virtues and vices, the history of the humanities, the philosophy of history, and the history of Christianity. Current Ph.D. projects deal with the history of the humanities and the history of medical ethics.

Publications