Henriëtte Rietveld is FWO (Research Foundation Flanders) Junior Postdoctoral Researcher at UGent. Her project “All the World is On Stage” analyzes the expenses of the Amsterdam City Theatre (the Schouwburg) to investigate how the stage was materially and socially entangled with the Dutch colonial project.
Henriëtte obtained her DFA from Yale in 2026. Her doctoral dissertation “Dramaturgies of Empire and Race: Transnational Adaptation on the Seventeenth-Century Dutch Stage” analyzed four adaptation journeys anchored in popular productions in the first decade of the Amsterdam City Theatre (Schouwburg), demonstrating that the Schouwburg experimented with, produced, and circulated nascent and strategic conceptions of empire and race in seventeenth-century Europe.
She received her BA (hons) from University College Roosevelt / Utrecht University (2009), her MA in Theatre Direction from the University of East Anglia (2011). She obtained her MFA in Dramaturgy from the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale as a Fulbright Fellow (2022).
Before coming to UGent, Henriëtte taught Dutch Literature at the University of Amsterdam (2024–2026). At Yale, she taught Theatre History as a Teaching Fellow, and her own course on environmental justice in performance. Henriëtte has also worked as a theatermaker and translator.
