Prof. dr. Elise van Nederveen Meerkerk (1975) is a professor of economic and social history, specialized in the history of labour relations, notably women’s and children’s work. In 2007, she obtained her PhD in Economic and Social History, on women’s work in the early modern Dutch Republic. Elise published in several leading economic and social history journals, such as the Economic History Review, Feminist Economics and the International Review of Social History. She has directed several comparative labour history projects, on the history of textile workers, child labour, domestic workers and sex workers.
From June 2017 to June 2020 Elise was extraordinary professor of "Comparative History of Households, Gender and Work" at Radboud University Nijmegen, a special chair instigated by the Unger van Brero-fonds. Among other things, she is member of the Advisory Board of the European Social Science History Conference. Between 2010 and 2018 she was Editorial Board member of Social Science History, the International Review of Social History and the Scandinavian Economic History Review. She is also an Honorary Research Fellow at the International Institute of Social History (IISH). In 2017-2018 she was a research fellow at NIAS. Elise is board member of the Dutch Royal Historical Society, and of the Prof. Van Winter Fonds, as well as NEHA/Unger van Brerofonds.
Elise van Nederveen Meerkerk currently leads the ERC Consolidator project Race to the bottom? Family labour, household livelihood and consumption in the relocation of global cotton manufacturing. This project studies the role of production and consumption by households in the global relocation of textile production between ca. 1780 and 1990.