I am a PhD student at the Department of History at Amsterdam University as part of the Amsterdam School for Regional, Transnational and European Studies.

I have background in the discipline of history, with a specific interest in social movements, state formation, and cultural representations. I have published, researched and lectured extensively about the rise of paramilitarism in Iraq during my time at the Dutch institute for war holocaust and genocide studies (NIOD). Currently I am researching state-society relations in Iraq during the Baath government by conducting interviews in combination with archival research. As a lecturer I have taught courses on political conflict, genocide, decolonization and modernity.

My PhD project focusses on political mobilization in Iraq under the Baath goverement based on a case-study of the 1991 uprising in Iraq.   Combining bottom-up and top-down perspectives, this project studies the 1991 uprising through oral history interviews with eyewitnesses that will be triangulated with documents preserved in the recently opened (2010) Iraqi state archives. This project aims to provide a historical persepctive on this uprising from all involved actors such as the Baath party, the resistors, foreign powers such as the US and beyond.