Aafje de Roest recently earned her PhD (cum laude) at Leiden University with her dissertation De nieuwe golf, on cultural identity in contemporary Dutch, Neerlandophone hip hop. This work will be published by Amsterdam University Press in 2025.

De Roest previously graduated (cum laude) from the Research Master’s in Dutch Literature and Culture at Utrecht University in 2017, with an award-winning thesis on the representation of Dutch urban spaces in Neerlandophone hip hop (Vliegenthart Thesis Prize, Thesis Prize of the Society of Dutch Literature). Since 2020, she has been one of the ‘Faces of Science’, a collaboration between NEMO and the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences. She appears regularly in national media, such as NOS News and NRC, and has worked with hip hop label Top Notch and Adidas on a youth-focused social impact campaign.

De Roest is a Supervisory Board member of the Dutch Foundation for Literature and has published in journals such as Global Hip Hop Studies and parallax. Her main research interests are in youth culture and contemporary literary culture. She is currently working on a project on the influence of Dutch fashion and lifestyle influencers on young women’s reading practices, supported by a 2024 Tiele Fellowship.

She is excited to continue her academic career at ARTES.