Pieter Huistra is Assistant Professor Theory of History at the Department of History and Art History of Utrecht University. Previously he was a Postdoctoral Fellow at KU Leuven and an Aspirant of the Research Foundation - Flanders (FWO), also at KU Leuven.

His research covers the history of science in its broadest meaning, ranging from the humanities to the biomedical and natural sciences. In 2013 he defended his PhD Thesis on Dutch historiography in the nineteenth century, which was published at Vantilt, Nijmegen. Afterwards he shifted his research attention to nineteenth-century Belgian anatomy and twentieth-century travelling scientists.

Two topics are central to his current research. First he combines historiography and the philosophy of history, both in his teaching and his research. He teaches such courses as Theory of History and Introduction to the Study of History. His research is concerned with historical epistemology and has as its central question: how does historical knowledge become true? Second, he studies scientific insitutions such as funding bodies and investigates the extent to which these twentieth-century institutions have shaped the infrastructure, the practices and the content of science.