Marianne P. Ritsema van Eck

Marianne P. Ritsema van Eck is an Assistant Professor in medieval history at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam since January 2024, specializing in cultural and religious history of the late medieval and early modern periods. She holds a cum laude PhD from the University of Amsterdam (2017) and has held positions at Leiden University and the Norwegian Institute in Rome as a Postdoctoral Fellow. Her research focuses on Franciscan studies, the cult of saints, pilgrimage, historical cartography, and Italian sacri monti. She is an Honorary Fellow at the Norwegian Institute in Rome and a Fellow of the HDC Centre for Religious History.

Key research projects include investigations into St. Helena’s cult in early modern Rome and the role of sacri monti as Franciscan devotional landscapes. Her teaching emphasizes methodological engagement with visual, material, and textual sources, including courses on European history, cultural history, and elementary Latin. She has published extensively on topics such as Franciscan Holy Land texts, relic mobility, and the interplay between textual and material culture in religious history.

• Education:
  • PhD in Medieval History, University of Amsterdam (2017)
  • MA in Medieval Studies
• Research Themes:
  • Franciscan Order History
  • Holy Land Imagery
  • Sacred Landscapes
  • Early Modern Cartography
• Teaching:
  • European History 500-1500
  • History of Knowledge
  • Elementary Latin
• Grants & Projects:
  • St Helena and the city of Rome: Re-inventing the late antique Christian past (2021-2023)
  • Franciscan Sacri Monti book project

Her work bridges textual analysis, material culture, and spatial history, contributing to interdisciplinary debates on heritage and religious memory. She actively engages with public scholarship through blogs and edited volumes on historical maps and religious landscapes.