I am an interdisciplinary scholar, integrating social science theories and methods with history both in my research and educational activities. My research examines how institutional and structural factors have shaped gender equality in well-being and female entrepreneurship across the 20th century. I propose a dynamic framework that explores the interaction of these elements to understand the rise and decline in various forms of gender inequality (health, politics, household, work) and outcomes in female entrepreneurship (business size, sectors).
Previously, my PhD research introduced new open-access data to analyze global gender gap trends from 1900 onwards. In my postdoctoral work within the Horizon 2020 project, I explored how institutional complementarities explain the diversity in entrepreneurship in Europe and its policy implications.
My current NWO-Veni project studies three key questions on female entrepreneurship: 1) What barriers women face(d) when they start and run their businesses; 2) How these barriers have changed over time; and 3) How women's strategies to overcome these constraints have evolved historically. This project aims to develop a comparative historical approach to female entrepreneurship in Europe since 1900. As part of this effort, I am co-editing a special issue for Business History titled "Where Have All the Business Women Gone? Female Entrepreneurship in the Long 20th Century" (2023-2025). During my GAK-NIAS research fellowship, I conducted a pilot research on the Dutch context.
I supervise two interdisciplinary PhD projects—one on family businesses and gender equality, and another on associative order and well-being—that complement this research agenda. Additionally, I co-supervise a PhD project on precarious work as an external supervisor.
I am one of the four executive core members of the interdisciplinary research platform "Bottom-up Initiatives for Societal Change" at Utrecht University's strategic theme Institutions for Open Societies (IOS). From 2020 to 2023, I also served as the History Board Member of the interdisciplinary PPE bachelor program, responsible for its daily management along with three other board members. During this time, I also coordinated skills training for PPE students and led two educational project teams to (re-)design PPE's interdisciplinary and professional skills training. As part of an educational initiative on interdisciplinarity, I co-edit a textbook with the working title “An Interdisciplinary PPE Approach to 21st Century Grand Challenges.