I am a historian from the Netherlands who holds a PhD in Contemporary History from the University of Sussex and lives in upstate New York. My primary areas of specialization include the history of radical political movements in Western Europe and the United States; working-class family history; oral history and public memories; and community change in times of acute and chronic stress.

My work has been published by outlets including, Cahiers d’histoire. Revue d’histoire critique; Labor and Society; Labour/Le Travail; Children Youth, and Environments; The Psychologist; Twentieth Century Communism, A Journal of International History; Tijdschrift voor Genderstudies; Biografie Bulletin; Insider; Natural Hazards Observer; United Academics Magazine; Disaster Research; AllAfrica; Buzzfeed News; and ABC News.

I received a Mellon/ACLS Community College Faculty Fellowship in 2022 for my most recent research project “Children of the Klan: Growing Up in the Southern Far Right 1950-1990”. In August 2024, I was awarded an NEH Public Scholars grant which allows me to take a year off from teaching and write a book based on my findings.

I’ve published two books, Growing Up Communist in the Netherlands and Britain. Childhood, Political Activism, and Identity Formation (Amsterdam University Press October 2021) and Mama las Marx: communistische gezinnen in naoorlogs Nederland (Walburg/Mazirel Pers, 2023) – named one of the best books of the year by the influential literary magazine the Dutch Review of Books – and an edited volume, Elke Weesjes and Matthew Worley (ed.) Music, Subcultures and Migration: Routes and Roots (Routledge, 2024).

I am an adjunct assistant professor at Stockton University in Galloway NJ where I teach the History of the US Far Right and an adjunct associate professor at Kingsborough Community College (CUNY) in Brooklyn, NY where I teach the History of the City of New York, the History of the Holocaust, European History, Women in US History, the Civil Rights Movement and the Movements it Inspired, Intro to U.S. Government, American History I, and Introduction to Women’s and Gender Studies. I am also the Director of the Kingsborough Holocaust Center.

Contact: [email protected] or [email protected]