Research projects

Seeking a Moving Target | A Healthy Defeat? | Racism Lard, Lice and Longevity | Understanding the Black market | From Camp to Claim

My research

In January 2001, allegedly due to an administrative error, I joined the research department of the Netherlands Institute for War Documentation. For an aspiring economic historian with a grounding in early-modern history and quantitative research, this seemed an unlikely place to work. To my surprise, however, the Second World War has, in various ways, remained a focal point of my research ever since, even as my research expanded to encompass the Twentieth Century as a whole.

My PhD thesis, now a book, compared the standard of living in occupied Denmark and the Netherlands. Although both countries were under German control, internal economic policies were almost entirely an indigenous affair; bureaucrats assumed control over the economy, and forced their populations into a pattern of consumption designed to be both economically feasible and physically sufficient. Planned consumption proved to be far more difficult to adminsiter and live with than anticipated, but the war years changed the role that governments played, and are still expected to play, in maintaining public health, and especially in the field of nutrition and agriculture.

Since finishing my PhD, I have published and presented several papers on wartime economic controls, especially on the resulting black markets and the problems faced by low-income families. I am interested in the history of welfare and welfare policies, as well as in the methodological problems of measuring welfare.

Another field of enduring interest is the history of health and healthcare. I recently published a chapter on the influence of Danish resistance veterans on the treatment of (and financial compensation for) war traumas in postwar Scandinavia. In Japan, where I currently live and work, I have been working on the swift, and as yet unexplained decline of tuberculosis during the American occupation. An investigation of Twentieth century living standards and their impact on child growth is currently in process, as is a hopefully insightful about the history of scientific racism.

If you have any questions about my research, would like to collaborate, or point out a mistake, please send me an email. With the links on the right, you can access detailed information about my past and current research projects. These include:

New research

Seeking a Moving Target. An investigation into global phenotypical convergence, using growth data on Japanese schoolgirls since 1900.

A Healthy Defeat. A study into the mysterious decline of tuberculosis during the American occupation of Japan.

Blood: Mass Violence and Racial Identity. A collaborative book project on the different concepts of race and their creation in modern Asia and Europe.

Past research

Lard, Lice and Longevity. My PhD project, now published as a book, on the biological standard of living in German-occupied Denmark and the Netherlands. Also read the Review.

Understanding the Black Market. A spin-off investigation into black markets in (mostly) Denmark and the Netherlands during the 1940s, with particular emphasis on the importance of illegal transactions for the poor.

From Camp to Claim. An investigation into the treatment of PTSD victims in postwar Norway and Denmark.