Emeritus Professor of Modern European Literature at the University of Amsterdam, part-time appointed research professor at the Sociaal Historisch Centrum Limburg, Maastricht University. He is the author and editor of eleven books and multiple articles on European cultural history and nationalism. His edited Encyclopedia of Romantic Nationalism in Europe, a two-volume work that presents the emerging nationalisms in Europe around the year 1800 in the international context, was listed among the Times Literary Supplement Books of the Year for 2018.