Jeroen Dewulf is Queen Beatrix Professor in Dutch Studies at the UC Berkeley Department of German, where he is the current undergraduate advisor. He also is a Professor at Berkeley’s Folklore Program, where he serves as graduate advisor. He is also the Faculty Academic Director of Berkeley Study Abroad and is chair of the UCEAP Faculty Directors group. In addition, Dewulf serves as a member of the UC Berkeley International Activities Coordination group. He is also the director of UC Berkeley’s Center for Portuguese Studies, Austrian Studies Program and BENELUX Program at the Institute of European Studies. He is an affililated member of Berkeley's DE in Renaissance and Early Modern Studies and an affiliated researcher at the University of Lisbon's Center of History.
Dewulf graduated with a major in Germanic Philology and a minor in Portuguese Studies from the University of Ghent, in Belgium. He holds an MA in Portuguese Studies from the University of Porto, in Portugal, and a PhD in German Literature from the University of Bern, in Switzerland. He has been a visiting professor at LMU Munich, the University of São Paulo, the Catholic University of Leuven, and the Institute of Advanced Studies at UCL London. Dewulf is associated with the University of Lisbon as a researcher at its Center of History. He also serves as the literary executor of the Swiss author Hugo Loetscher (1929-2009).
His main areas of research are Dutch and Portuguese colonial and postcolonial history, literature, religion, and culture, the transatlantic slave trade, and Black cultural, folkloric and religious traditions in the Americas. He publishes in five different languages (English, Dutch, German, Portuguese and French). In 2010, he was distinguished by the Hellman Family Faculty Fund and in 2012 he received the Robert O. Collins Award in African Studies as well as the American Cultures Innovation in Teaching Award. In 2014, he was distinguished with the Hendricks Award of the New Netherland Institute for his research on the early Dutch history of New York and the first community of enslaved Africans in Manhattan. In 2015, his research on Black performance traditions in Louisiana was distinguished with the Louisiana History President’s Memorial Award and both in 2015 and 2016, he was the recipient of the Clague and Carol Van Slyke Article Prize in New Netherland studies. In 2019, his monograph on the Mardi Gras Indians received the Gold Medal Independent Publishers Book Award and he was distinguished by the Luso-American Foundation for his contributions to the field of Portuguese Studies. In 2023, his book Afro-Atlantic Catholics was awarded the John Gilmary Shea Prize.
Recent Publications:
All recent book publications are listed on the right.
Articles and Book Chapters:
2025
“The Providence Island-Manhattan Connection: New Insights into the Arrival of the Second Group of Enslaved Africans in New Netherland (1636),” New York History, 106:01 (2025), 1-18.
“Vida e Morte no Império de Sombras Português: encomendar as Almas em Ano-Bom e no Haiti,” Revista Brasileira de História das Religiões, 18:52 (January-April 2025), 1-15.
2024
“The Saga of Lohodann: Making Sense of an Annobonese Folktale Rooted in Carolingian Drama,” Journal of Early Modern Studies 13 (2024): 343-362.
“From the Geste Francor to Lohodann: A Comparative Analysis of an African Variant of Roland’s Birth and Youth,” Fabula 65:3-4 (2024): 369-84.
“Reading Sojourner Truth’s Narrative (1850) as a Pioneering Literary Denouncement of Dutch Colonialism,” Elisabeth Krimmer and Chunjie Zhang (eds.): Gender and German Colonialism: Intimacies, Accountabilities, Intersections (New York and London: Routledge, 2024), 109-27.
“De Rooms-Katholieke Kerk en het Nederlands Slavernijverleden: Afro-Atlantische Katholieken,” Perspectief 62 (2024) 23-33.
Atlantic Studies, with a focus on history, folklore, culture, religion, literature, and language; The transatlantic slave trade; Dutch and Portuguese colonial history, literature, and culture; German literature, with a focus on Switzerland.