T. van Gaalen (Thomas) MA

Thomas van Gaalen is a PhD candidate at the Department of Modern Languages and Cultures. Funded by the RICH open PhD proposal round, his work revolves around (global) labor history, social movements, and intersections of capitalism and empire.

His PhD project studies how practices of solidarity provided an on-the-ground response to the economic transformations that marked the Caribbean of the early twentieth century. Taking three particular collective labor actions on the Caribbean island of Curaçao as its core focus, the project probes 1) how ordinary people’s lives were altered and reconstituted amid changing labor regimes in the region at hand; and 2) how people utilized the framework of solidarity to develop strategies and tactics to respond to these transformations. The project, which employs both archival research and digital humanities methods, sheds light on the ways in which people negotiated, contested and resisted the expansion of early twentieth-century global capitalism ‘from below.’

Thomas completed a bachelor's degree in history, a master’s in cultural history and a research master’s in history at Utrecht University. After his studies, he worked as a research assistant at Utrecht University, a researcher for the Boekmanstichting Institute for Arts, Culture and Related Policy, and as a freelance illustrator. He is currently the artistic director of political magazine Jacobin Nederland. Additionally, Thomas is a coordinator of the European Labour History Network's Labour and Empire Working Group.