Leen Breure

Leen Breure

Leen Breure works with the information science group of the department of Department of Information and Computing Sciences of the University of Utrecht. He has specialized in content engineering and multimedia, in particular the reuse of existing content not being created explicitly for that purpose. Currently, the application domain of his research is digital cultural heritage with a focus on cultural landscapes.

Leen studied history at the University of Utrecht. Afterwards, he worked there for several years with the department of medieval history, specializing in psychological aspects of religious movements. His dissertation on the late medieval reform movement the Modern Devotion was his starting point in using computer techniques. This historical and psychological study on the experience of life and death among the members of these communities required an in-depth analysis of their biographies and chronicles. This first acquaintance with the computer and computer-aided text analysis has grown over years into a much broader and professional interest in ICT.

From the mid 80’s he was with the department of computer in the humanities (Computer & Letteren) at the same university. In this period he worked on historical database design and information systems in general, combining text with structured data in the pre-XML era.