I am a social and economic historian working on questions surrounding the determinants of contemporary development outcomes. I am particularly interested in finding novel ways to measure cultural and institutional phenomena. Most of my research focuses on gender inequality and family organisation. Justice and fairness have always interested me (one of my first school reports even says as much). This source of inspiration has guided my choice of projects as I work to understand the root causes of inequalities and what we can do to tackle them. I wrote a PhD dissertation (supervised by Jan Luiten van Zanden, Tine De Moor and Jan Kok) on the world-wide developments in gender equality over the past 150 years on world scale.
I am an assistant professor within the department of History and Art History at Utrecht University. In this position I am the co-ordinator of the English language History BA programme and am responsible for a number of courses at BA and MA level. I have experience teaching and designing courses that introduce students to economic history and quantitative methods. I have also supervised internships both as an academic and as an organisational supervisor.
I have worked within the Race to the Bottom project co-ordinated by Elise van Nederveen Meerkerk. In this project we looked at developments in the textile industry as its centres of production moved across the globe. Together with my colleague Corinne Boter we are building a dataset on wages in the textile industry from 1800. Within this project and others I have been the supervisor of two PhD students.
I have extensive experience organising international workshops and conference sessions, as well as with refereeing and editing.
In addition I am on the editorial board of the Yearbook for Women's History and have been an assistant to the editors for the Brill Series on Global Economic history.