Since February 2021, I have been a lecturer in modern European literature at the Department of European Studies, University of Amsterdam. Per the academic year 2022-23, I am also co-coordinator of our BA programme, with specific responsibilities for the Dutch track and the first year.
Before this, from 2017 to 2021, I was a PhD Candidate in Comparative Literature with University of Groningen / Campus Fryslân, the Netherlands. My dissertation, “A Europe of Connections: Post-National Worlds in Contemporary Minority Literature,” centres on six writers from Finland to the United Kingdom, and from the Netherlands to Spain. I combine perspectives from world literature, minority studies, and European studies to elaborate a “worldly reading” strategy that is attuned to how these writers negotiate pressures of the national in times of globalization. Parts of this project have been published in Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature and Global Perspectives.
Currently, I am working on a number of smaller projects focusing on how literature, art, and culture in Europe contribute to societal discussions on pressing matters of common concern, such as migration, climate change, and identity. With Nicoletta Pireddu (Georgetown University), I have edited a special issue on "Imagining Communities, Multilingually," to be published with parallax in early 2023. With Agnes Andeweg (Utrecht University), I am editing a special issue on hospitality and narrative ethics Ali Smith's Seasonal Quartet, which will be published open access with C21 Literature. With Margriet van der Waal (University of Groningen/University of Amsterdam), I am co-editing a special issue on "The Cultural Deliberation of Europe," which is due to be published with Continuum later this year or early next year. Lastly, I sit on the editorial board of CoLing's "To Be--Named" project, which will lead to an edited volume, a special issue, and a travelling exhibition.
With Bram Mellink (modern and contemporary history, UvA), I am in the initial stages of a project on the history of HIV/AIDS in the Netherlands, the emergency (or lack thereof) of an LGBT+ memory culture, and the construction of a cultural archive of HIV/AIDS in the Netherlands. We work together with IHLIA, House of HIV, the HIV-vereniging, and are in touch with the European HIV/AIDS Archive in Berlin.
I am currently starting a project provisionally entitled “Connective Fictions” that investigates how literature can be the connection between abstract, transborder processes such as climate change and migration on the one hand and individual, everyday life on the other. This project continues my interest in the ways various scales – the local, the national, the global – intersect and impact daily life, while extending my purview to the environmental humanities.
In addition to my activities at the University of Amsterdam, I serve on the editorial board of Armada. Tijdschrift voor wereldliteratuur and member of the board of advice of the Nederlands Letterenfonds.
I hold a BA in Liberal Arts and Sciences from University College Utrecht (2012, cum laude), an MA in Comparative Literature from University College London (2013, cum laude), and an MA in Euroculture from the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen and the University of Groningen (2016, cum laude).