PROF.DR. HARM DEN BOER studied in Leiden and at the Complutense University in Madrid. Between 1990 and 2005, he taught as a tenured professor of Spanish Literature at the University of Amsterdam. He has participated in numerous conferences and academic courses in Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, England, France, and Israel, among other countries.

Since 2006, he has held the Chair of Iberian and Romance Philology at the University of Basel. His research focuses on the literature of the Spanish Golden Age, and in particular the literature, culture, and intellectual history of Jews and Conversos (Jewish converts to Christianity) in the Iberian Peninsula. The subject of his doctoral dissertation, which he completed at the University of Amsterdam in 1992, was the Hispano-Portuguese literature of the Sephardic Jews in Amsterdam during the 17th and 18th centuries.