Jan Luiten van Zanden


Jan Luiten van Zanden is a Dutch economic historian. He is faculty professor at Utrecht University in the chair Global Economic History, appointed on 01-09-2008.

Career

Van Zanden graduated cum laude in Economics from the VU University Amsterdam in 1981. He received a doctorate from Wageningen University and Research Centre in 1985 with a thesis titled "The economic development of Dutch agriculture in the 19th century, 1800-1914."
After obtaining his PhD he worked for two years at Erasmus University Rotterdam. From 1987 to 1993 he was professor of economic and social history at the VU University Amsterdam. In 1992 he was appointed professor in history at Utrecht University and since 2009 is faculty professor of economic and social history. In addition, in 2010 he was appointed honorary professor as the Maddison Chair at the University of Groningen. From 2011 is honorary professor at the Stellenbosch University.
He was particularly concerned with the economic history of the Netherlands in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but also with the economic history of Indonesia, with the history of Rabobank and that of Royal Dutch Shell. In 2003 he received the Spinoza Prize. From 2009 to 2012 he was president of the International Economic History Association.

Awards and memberships

In 2003 he was awarded the Spinoza Prize by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research, for "putting the entire Dutch economic history on the international map and for leading excellent research projects". In 1997 he became a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, where he was Academy Professor from 2011 to 2016.
In 2009, he was president of the organising committee of the fifteenth World Economic History Congress 2009 in Utrecht. In 2014 he was awarded the Pierson Penning Prize and in 2016 he became a member of the Academia Europaea.

Select Publications

Books

Van Zanden has authored and co-authored several books including: