Bruin, drs. M.J. de (Martine)

Martine de Bruin (1969) studied Dutch language and literature at Utrecht University, specialising in historical literature (diachronics) and literary studies. From 1995, she worked as a researcher at the Meertens Institute, Department of Ethnology. Where she worked for six years on the publication of Het Repertorium van het Nederlandse lied tot 1600 / Repertory of Dutch Songs until 1600 (Amsterdam/Ghent 2001) in the Flemish-Dutch collaboration of the same name between the UFSIA (University of Antwerp) and the Meertens Institute. This project located and described all Dutch-language songs from the Middle Ages and 16th century. She worked part-time on a PhD thesis on Dutch song culture from 2001 onwards, in particular on the ‘smartlap’. In 2003-2004, she also worked on the project Street Songs, a collaboration between the Royal Library in The Hague, the Meertens Institute and the Memory of the Netherlands. In this project, two large collections of song sheets were unlocked, digitised and made accessible to a large audience. Since 2001, she has also worked at the Meertens Institute’s Technical Development Department, where she manages and further develops the Dutch Song Database, among other things.

Research interests: ethnology, oral culture, (written) lore, oral heritage, printing history, the Dutch song, ‘smartlappen’, songs of life, choirs, sing-along events, the Dutch national anthem, the sixteenth-century song, songbooks, song sheets, digitalisation.