NNI Annual Conference – New Netherland and the World

September 15, 2026

The program for the New Netherland Institute’s Annual Conference, New Netherland and the World, is live now. I’ll be talking about this conference quite a bit in the coming weeks. Here, I wanted to highlight one aspect of the conference that is particularly important to me. Although we choose a different theme every year (you can find previous themes under past conferences),  the constant remains that we are committing to bringing you the best scholarship on New Netherland. But what does the “best” mean? When the conference committee convenes to review the paper proposals for the conference, we strive to have a balance between established scholars – those who have already written books – and scholars that are still starting out – advanced PhD candidates or those who have recently received PhDs. That way, we can bring you both deep insights based on long experiences studying the subject and new perspectives that will inform the next decades of New Netherland research. And, as I said, this is a meaningful part of the conference to me because I presented at the New Netherland Institute’s 2012 conference when I was a graduate student. Being able to share my work with the knowledgeable people in the audience at the Huxley Theater was a fantastic experience, and I am so pleased to be able to offer that experience to others.

Deborah Hamer
Director of New Netherland Institute