Elise van Nederveen Meerkerk

Elise van Nederveen Meerkerk is an economic and social historian specialized in the history of labour relations, notably women’s and children’s work. In 2007, she obtained her PhD in Economic and Social History, on women’s work in the early modern Dutch Republic. Elise published in several leading economic and social history journals, such as the Economic History Review, Feminist Economics, and the International Review of Social History. She has directed several comparative labour history projects, on the history of textile workers, child labour, domestic workers, and sex workers.

In 2017, Elise obtained an ERC Consolidator Grant for the project Race to the bottom? Family labour, household livelihood and consumption in the relocation of global cotton manufacturing (acronym TextileLab). She is currently Principal Investigator on this project (80%), which is hosted by Utrecht University, where she also teaches for 20% of her time. Before moving to Utrecht, Elise has worked at Wageningen University (2013-2017), the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam (2000-2007 and 2009-2012) and Leiden University (2007-2011).

Her past projects include the NWO Vidi-project Industriousness in an imperial economy. Women’s and Children’s work in the Netherlands and the Netherlands Indies 1815-1940 at Wageningen University, the Netherlands. This project aimed to analyze the connections between the histories of women’s and children’s work in both parts of the Dutch Empire, and unravel mutual influences between metropolis and colony.