From the Director's Desk
Deborah Hamer, Executive Director,
The New Netherland Institute
Dr. Deborah Hamer is Director of the New Netherland Institute in Albany, New York, where she is responsible for initiatives aimed at identifying, preserving, digitizing, and translating Dutch language documents in repositories around the world as well as advancing scholarship on New Netherland and its place in the Atlantic world. Deborah received her M.A. and Ph.D. from Columbia University and was a National Endowment for the Humanities Postdoctoral fellow at the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture. She has also taught at Boston College and the University of Miami and has published articles in a number of scholarly journals. You can find her on social media at LinkedIn and Bluesky.
An unmatched expert in the language of New Netherland, Gehring is retiring after 50 year interpreting colonial Dutch to explain the lives of New York’s earliest European settlers.
The third season of Live From New Amsterdam will begin on Thursday, October 30, 2025 when Russell Shorto speaks to Dr. Elisabeth Paling Funk about her new book, The Dutch World of Washington Irving, out now with Cornell University Press and part of our New Netherland Institute book series.
On April 2, 2025 Charly Gehring officially retired after 50 years of translation work. Read Paul Grondahl’s tribute to Charly in the April 9th Albany Times Union here.
An unmatched expert in the language of New Netherland, Gehring is retiring after 50 year interpreting colonial Dutch to explain the lives of New York’s earliest European settlers.
