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About Me

My research and teaching interests lie in the transnational histories of sexuality, race, and the politics of oil and empire in the twentieth century. I am especially committed to the study of the Caribbean, Europe, and the entanglement of these regions in the aftermath of racial slavery and colonialism.

My current book manuscript, Offshore Attachments: Oil and Intimacy in the Caribbean, explores how sex conditioned the movement of oil and the people who traveled along its commodity chain in the age of decolonization. Set in the “offshore” Dutch territories in the Caribbean — islands under Dutch sovereignty and home to some of the world’s largest refinery sites — the book argues that the apex of oil and the end of empire brought renewed intervention in Caribbean sexuality, resulting in the flagrant flouting and routine circumvention of European law on sex work, marriage, divorce, contraception and abortion offshore. Joining analysis of the political economy of oil with histories of race and sexuality, Offshore Attachments shows how durable prejudices structured oil economies and the uneven yet enduring relation between Europe’s on- and offshore.

My next project, Moynihan in Europe, chronicles the emergence and diffusion of social scientific literature on black family life. Tracing the movements of racial knowledge from the United States and the colonial Caribbean to its later reception in decolonization-era Europe, I ask how post-slavery knowledge centering on race, the family and sexuality traveled across time and national contexts ultimately to shape the policies foundational to postwar Europe.

Recent Publications

Media Coverage

Social Media

Country Focus

Netherlands, Dutch Caribbean

Expertise by Geography

Caribbean, Netherlands, Western Europe

Expertise by Chronology

Modern, 20th century

Expertise by Topic

Colonialism, Gender, Race, Rebellion & Revolution, Sexuality