I am a historian from the Netherlands who holds a PhD in Contemporary History from the University of Sussex and currently 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 memory; and community change in times of acute and chronic stress.

My work has appeared in publications including Cahiers d’histoire. Revue d’histoire critique; Labor and Society; Labour/Le Travail; Children, Youth and Environments; Journal of Southern History; 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.

In 2022, I received a Mellon/ACLS Community College Faculty Fellowship for my research project Children of the Klan: White Supremacist Families and the Long Segregationist Movement, 1954–1989. In August 2024, I was awarded an NEH Public Scholars grant, which enabled me to take a year-long leave from teaching to write a book based on this research.

I am the author of Growing Up Communist in the Netherlands and Britain: Childhood, Political Activism, and Identity Formation (Amsterdam University Press, 2021) and Mama las Marx: Communistische gezinnen in naoorlogs Nederland (Walburg Pers/Mazirel Pers, 2023), which was named one of the best books of the year by De Nederlandse Boekengids (the Dutch Review of Books). I am also co-editor, with Matthew Worley, of Music, Subcultures and Migration: Routes and Roots (Routledge, 2024).

I am an Adjunct Associate Professor at Kingsborough Community College (CUNY), where I teach courses on New York City history, the Holocaust, European history, women in U.S. history, the Civil Rights Movement and its legacies, U.S. government, American history, and women’s and gender studies.

Contact: [email protected] | [email protected]