Laurens (Lars) Boomsma is a PhD Candidate in Comparative Literature at Princeton University. In his dissertation, titled “A Grammar of Thought: Herder, Humboldt, Hegel and the Bildung of a Philosophical Language,” he argues that turn of the 19th century German philosophy of language is underpinned by a belief in the epistemological superiority of the German language. Through individual studies of the works of Johann Gottfried Herder, Wilhelm von Humboldt and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, he suggests that the notion of the relative philosophical “perfection” of the grammatical features of the German language in expressing thought ties together their seemingly disparate accounts of the nature of language. 

 Lars holds two BA’s in Philosophy and Language and Culture Studies from Utrecht University and two MA’s in Philosophy, Politics and Economics and Media Studies from Leiden University. Before joining Princeton, he taught philosophy at the Royal University of Phnom Penh in Cambodia, was an English teacher at a high school in Bangkok and worked as a tour guide in Rome. An avid language learner, he has varying degrees of fluency in ten languages.   

During the academic year 2024/2025, Lars is a postgraduate research associate at Queen Mary University in London.