Wilt L. Idema (born 12 November 1944) is a Dutch scholar and Sinologist teaching at Harvard University specializing in Chinese literature, with interests in early Chinese drama, Chinese women's literature of the premodern period, Chinese popular narrative ballads, and early development of Chinese vernacular fiction.

He and his wife have two children.

Idema took his undergraduate degree from Leiden University, Department of Chinese Languages & Cultures in 1968. He then studied in the Department of Sociology, Hokudai University, Sapporo, Japan in 1968- 1969 and the Institute for Research in Humanities at Kyoto University. April 1, 1969 –March 31, 1970; Universities Service Center, Hong Kong. Summer 1970. He took his doctoral degree at Leyden University 30 October 1974, where his thesis, Chinese Vernacular Fiction,the Formative Period, was completed under the direction of A.F.P. Hulsewé.

Idema then taught at his alma mater in the Department of Chinese Language and Culture. He was promoted to Professor of Chinese Literature and Linguistics in 1976. At Leiden at various times he was Chairman of the Department of Chinese Languages & Culture; Vice-dean for Educational Matters, School of Humanities; Dean, School of Humanities; Director, Centre for Non-Western Studies; Dean, School of Humanities. He has been Visiting Professor at University of Hawaii at Manoa, University of California at Berkeley, and École Pratique des Hautes Études, Paris. Since 2000, he has been Professor of Chinese Literature at Harvard University. Among his professional positions are Co-editor T'oung Pao, 1993-1999; Editor Sinica Leidensia, 1997-2006; Editor Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, 2000-2003.

In 2009, colleagues published a volume of studies in his honor, Text, Performance, and Gender in Chinese Literature and Music Essays in Honor of Wilt Idema. The Introduction says that Idema "masterfully integrates translation with cultural-historical contextualization, in what over the years has become a uniquely recognizable style." They commented that his body of work "is exceptional in its inclusiveness and its ability to let differernt historical periods, genres and issues speak to one another." The bibliography "is something of an explosion of language" and "its fairly shocking physical length is only one indicator of what Wilt's work means to our field, for this is not just a function of the encyclopedic scope of his knowledge, or his sheer productivity, or even of the quality and the ambition of his work." In a review of the field of Chinese literature, Robert E. Hegel declared "Wilt L. Idema's studies in Chinese Vernacular Fiction: The Formative Period are definitive statements on vernacular literature in general, on the short story, and on the long pinghua.

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