I work on the history of public health as an example of how things are done together in modern societies. During my Bachelor in History at Utrecht University, I got interested in this topic as an exchange student at the Medical History and Bioethics Department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. I initially specialised in the history of eugenics, evolutionary theory, and Malthusianism in the Netherlands during my MSc in history of science at Utrecht University. These topics motivated me to further explore the history of population health at Oxford University and write a thesis on the role of biological concepts in interwar Dutch public health debates. I revised its chapter on the history of Dutch eugenics as an essay titled ‘Sown without care: Dutch eugenicists and their call for optimising developmental conditions, 1919-1939.’ For this manuscript I received the Roy Porter Essay prize from the Society for Social History of Medicine in 2022.

During the summer of 2020, the Dutch Scientific Council (NWO) awarded me funding for my project ‘Safeguarding a healthy future: Dutch child health intervention between politics and practice 1901-2020.’ I explore the collective practices of weighing, vaccinating, and testing to investigate how and why concerns about the health of pre-school children motivated collective activities in the emerging Dutch welfare state. I use this history to understand why and how certain preventive activities proliferated, became ‘social,’ and transported and reïnforced ways of living together. I do this research at the Erasmus University Rotterdam and the Erasmus MC under supervision of Noortje Jacobs, Ralf Futselaar, and Timo Bolt. I receive training in Science and Technology Studies at WTMC - the Netherlands Graduate School of Science, Technology, and Modern Culture. For presenting my research on infant mortality as a public issue, the the European Association for the History of Medicine and Health awareded me the Pieter van Foreest prize for best PhD-paper in 2023.

Besides my research into medical history, I am interested in the historical sociology of late modern science, particularly of research funding, academic publishing, peer review, academic career structures, and academic integrity. I deeply care about improving the academic system through interdisciplinary projects fostering a robust, diverse, reflexive, and democratic research culture. Besides my research, I have worked as a policy maker focused on responsible research at Tilburg University. I also acted as chair of the Centre of Trial and Error. I am currently coordinator of all scientific literacy activities at the Erasmus MC.

Together with Stefan Gaillard, I have been listed at the 2024 Forbes 30 under 30 list in the category of Science and Healthcare for our work for the Journal of Trial and Error, which we co-founded together with Max Bautista Perpinyà.

During fall term 2024, I will be a visiting fellow at Harvard History of Science, supervised by David Jones and Allan Brandt. I will be a visiting Student Researcher at the Kavli Center for Ethics, Science, and the Public at University of California at Berkeley during spring semester 2025, supervised by Elena Conis.