Research group LivesLab
Specialisation Labour migration in Europe from around 1600 to the present day
Contact jelle.van.lottum@huygens.knaw.nl
+31 (0)20-2246824

Biography

Jelle van Lottum (1976) did his undergraduate degree in Social and Economic History in Amsterdam, at the VU University. In 2007 he defended his PhD (Utrecht University) on the economic causes and effects of the labour migration in the North Sea region, a project that ran at the International Institute of Social History. From 2007 to 2011 he worked at the University of Cambridge. first as an ESRC-Postdoctoral Fellow, then as a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow (attached to the Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure and St John’s College). From 2011 and 2016 he worked at the Universities of Oxford (2011) and Birmingham 2011-2016) where he led a large ESRC Research Project. At Birmingham, he was also a senior lecturer. At Huygens ING, where he moved to in 2016, he was first a senior researcher, and in 2020 he became head of the History Department. From 2020 onwards, he is professor of the History of Labour Migration in Comparative Perspective at the Radboud University in Nijmegen. His inaugural address can be read here. He is also editor-in-chief of the Journal of Applied History, a journal which he founded with Harm Kaal (Radboud University) in 2018, and chairs the Maritiem Portal.

His research focuses on the history of labour migration in Europe from 1600 to the present. In his most recent research, he investigates the chances of labour migrants in the Dutch economy, with a special focus on the maritime sector. What were the chances for social mobility for labour migrants in this sector and how does this compare to their Dutch peers?