Dr J.J.M. Dera (Jeroen)

Jeroen Dera (1986) is Associate Professor of Dutch Literature. He received his PhD in 2017 for a dissertation on literary programmes on Dutch radio and television between 1925 and 1975, focusing on how they combined literature with education and cultural mediation.

He subsequently shifted his research to literature education and young people’s reading cultures. Key themes include:

* Literature education in Dutch and Flemish schools
* Teenagers’ reading practices and conceptions of literature
* Digital literary culture (e.g. BookTok, online reading challenges, bookishness, and performative reading)
* Representations of young readers in popular culture
* Cross-fertilisation between Dutch Studies and the school subject of Dutch

Dera has received several research grants from the Dutch Research Council (NWO), including Veni, Vidi, and SSH XS grants, as well as funding from the Research Foundation – Flanders (FWO). In 2023, he received a KNAW Early Career Award for his innovative research on teenage readers.

At Radboud University, Dera teaches in the BA programme in Dutch Language and Culture, the MA programme in Literary Studies, and the MA programme in Education in Language and Cultural Studies. Nationally, he is a member of the Dutch Language and Literature Mastery Team within the Humanities Subject Didactics programme, as well as a member of the Committee for Language and Literature of the Royal Society of Dutch Language and Literature. In 2024, he was elected to the Young Academy of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW).

Dera is editor-in-chief of the academic journals TNTL and Humanities & Education. He also serves as an editor of Vaardig met vakinhoud, a widely used handbook for pre-service teachers of Dutch, and writes a regular poetry column for Levende Talen Magazine.

His most recent book, 'De spagaat: Jonge lezers in tijden van ontlezing' (The Split: Young Readers in an Age of Declining Reading), was published by Querido in 2026.