Trude Dijkstra is Assistant Professor in Book Studies at the University of Amsterdam. Her research explores the material and visual culture of knowledge production and exchange in the early modern period, with a particular focus on the role of books and print in shaping perceptions of the non-European world. Her work combines analytical bibliography, book history, and the history of science to investigate how information about Asia—particularly China—was represented, circulated, and consumed in Europe.

She is the author of The Chinese Imprint: Printing and Publishing Chinese Religion and Philosophy in the Dutch Republic, 1595–1700 (Brill, 2021, Open Access), and has published widely on Chinese religion and philosophy in print, the depiction of Chinese medicine in early modern books, and the visual strategies of Jesuit intermediaries. She was awarded the KNAW Early Career Award in 2024 and has held fellowships at the Warburg Institute, the Wellcome Institute, and the Scaliger Institute.

Trude is involved in several international research collaborations, including Visualizing the Unknown (Huygens Institute / Bibliotheca Hertziana), Hortus Indicus Malabaricus (Max Planck Institute for the History of Science), and Making Knowledge through Word, Image, Print (University of Minnesota / DAAD). She is also co-supervising PhD projects on Chinese typography and on the transmission of ancient astrological texts in comparative perspective.

At the University of Amsterdam, she teaches on the history of the book, early modern print culture, and the global circulation of knowledge. She serves on the boards of Quaerendo, the Tiele-Stichting, and the Brill series The Library of the Written Word, and regularly collaborates with libraries and museums on public engagement and exhibition projects.