dr. R.J.H. Smeets (Roel)

I completed two BA’s at Utrecht University (Philosophy, Dutch Language and Culture), and a RMa Dutch Literature at Utrecht University and the University of Amsterdam. I have been a research intern at CLiPS (University of Antwerp), and at the project ‘the Riddle of Literary Quality’ at Huygens (KNAW). My main field of interest is ideological criticism on literature. Methodologically, I specialised in computational and quantitative methods for literary studies. I found that scientific innovation in literary and cultural studies is particularly achievable by creatively combining traditional with new research methods, which is one the goals of my present research at Radboud University.

In the last decade or so, the rise of Digital Humanities has made it possible to implement data-driven computational and quantitative methods in humanities research. Recently, a broadening range of research has been carried out on the computational analysis of social networks in (literary) texts. In order to reveal relational patterns between characters in recent Dutch literary fiction, my PhD research integrates computational distant reading methods into the practice of critical close reading.