M.E. Keulen (Marie)

Marie Keulen is a PhD candidate at the History Department of the Radboud University and a research fellow at the National Maritime Museum. She is a social and cultural historian of colonialism with a special interest in the role of religion and religious organisations in Caribbean colonial societies.

Her research project ‘Shaping Religious Lives: Colonial Governance, Missionaries, and Afro-Caribbean Religion in the Dutch Caribbean 1820-1900’ (2023-2028) investigates Afro-Caribbean experiences of, reactions to, and participation in Catholic and Protestant missions. The project aims to understand the social impact of and local responses to missionary practices of different religious organisations in a period that Christian missions became increasingly entangled with colonial governance. As such, the project aims to gain insight into the operation of colonial power structures in the everyday (religious) lives of Afro-Caribbeans.

Currently, Marie Keulen is also a Prof. J.C.M. Warnsinck Fellow at the National Maritime Museum (Het Scheepvaartmuseum), where she researches the role of missionary travel writing in Dutch imperial culture.