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 the conceptual framework of solidarity helped structure on-the-ground responses to the economic transformations that marked the Caribbean of the early twentieth century. Taking invocations of solidarity during 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 socio-economic transformations in the region at hand; and 2) how people utilized the framework of solidarity to develop strategies and tactics to respond to these transformations. Doing so, the project probes the premises of the early-twentieth-century 'solidarity boom': why, in fact, did solidarity grow into such an appealing and widespread political rallying cry among the populations that powered global industrial transformation in the early 1900s? The project, which employs both archival research and digital 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.