Together with Jan Willem Duyvendak, who was recently re-installed as NIAS director until his retirement in 2026, Marlous Willemsen will form the NIAS directorate. With more than 15 years of management experience in academic and cultural contexts, Marlous brings an effective set of skills, perspectives, and relations to help build NIAS’ future.
About Marlous Willemsen
Marlous Willemsen combines management competencies with a solid knowledge of the cultural and research sectors. From 2009 – 2022 she was director of Imagine IC, an activist archive, based in the superdiverse Amsterdam Southeast area. Before that, she was deputy director at the International Institute for the Study of Islam in the Modern World in Leiden, and programme manager at the Prince Claus Fund in The Hague. Marlous has served as an advisor to a broad range of funding bodies, NGOs, and projects, such as, currently, the Tussenlanding project, in which former inhabitants document the history of a refugee center. Willemsen holds a Master’s degree in Arabic from Utrecht University.
Marlous: “I am greatly looking forward to working with all the people at NIAS and making the research community even more diverse and inspiring. It is also an exciting privilege to contribute to sharing with society the rich gamut of academic insights produced at NIAS.”
Building on what we have already accomplished, we trust Marlous Willemsen will help to optimize our organization, strengthen our partnerships, and expand our networks. Marlous Willemsen will take office on 2 February 2023.
Photo by Hans Mooren