Frans Willem Korsten (1959) is a researcher and professor. He has published a number of monographs on literature and politics, the politico-cultural organization of Europe, the Dutch baroque, representations of violence, and the field of literature and law. Since 1998 he has been working at the Leiden University Faculty of Humanities. Since 2007 he also holds the endowed chair in Literature and Society at the Erasmus School of History, Culture and Communication in Rotterdam. Since 2013 he has been a lector at Willem de Kooning Academy in Rotterdam, working particularly with the Piet Zwart Institute.
In the past, Korsten has served as director of Education of LUCAS, the Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society; as chairman for the section Letters at the National Council for Culture, and as a member of the Rotterdam Council for Culture, while he was also responsible for the NWO internationalization program Post, Autonomia and Precarity – The Global Heritage (2010-2014).