Dr M.T. Rosenbaum-Feldbrügge (Matthias)

Specialist in historical microdata - Humanities Lab Faculty of Arts
Researcher - Radboud Institute for Culture and History

Contact

matthias.rosenbaum-feldbruegge@ru.nl

Visiting address

Erasmusplein 1
6525 HT NIJMEGEN

Postal address

Postbus 9103
6500 HD NIJMEGEN

Working days Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday

Matthias Rosenbaum-Feldbrügge is a historical demographer and data specialist affiliated with the economic, social and demographic history expertise group (ESDG), the Historical Database Suriname and the Caribbean (HDSC), the Humanities Lab of the Faculty of Arts, and the Radboud Institute for Culture & History (RICH).

He is the project leader of Chains of the Past, a large data infrastructure project that enables the reconstruction of the lives of enslaved people in the former Dutch colonies. This collaboration between Radboud University and the International Institute of Social History (IISH) facilitates genealogical research and research into among others inequality, social mobility, health, and fertility in colonial societies.

Matthias has published in demographic journals such as "Demography", "European Journal of Population", "Population, Space, and Place", "The History of the Family", and "Demographic Research", and likes life-course analysis, bear´s garlic, and 1860 München.

Tags: Historical Demography, Life-Course Analysis, Quantitative Methods, Historical Database Suriname and the Caribbean, Colonial Heritage

Research group

Radboud Group for Historical Demography and Family History

Publications

Key publications

Rosenbaum-Feldbrügge, M., Quanjer B. & Thompson, K. (2026). Mothers and maternal grandmothers kept children alive during slavery: Evidence from the Surinamese slave registers, 1830-1863. Demography, 12446726. Full text
Visser, J. & Rosenbaum-Feldbrügge, M. (2025). Tracing trans-imperial transfers of enslaved people between the Dutch and Danish West Indies, 1834-1848. The History of the Family, 30 (2), 304-327. Full text
Quanjer, B., van Dijk, I.K. & Rosenbaum-Feldbrügge, M. (2023). Short lives: The impact of parental death on early-life mortality and height in the Netherlands, 1850–1940. Demography, 60 (1), 255-279. Full text
Stawarz, N., Rosenbaum-Feldbrügge, M., Sander, N., Sulak, H. & Knobloch, V. (2022). The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on internal migration in Germany: A descriptive analysis. Population, Space, and Place. e66. Full text
Rosenbaum-Feldbrügge, M. (2019). The impact of parental death in childhood on son's and daughter's status attainment in young adulthood in the Netherlands, 1850-1952. Demography. 56 (5), 1827-1854. Full text

Publication lists

Research grants and prizes

Projects

2026 - 2030 Chains of the Past: Open Infrastructure for the Global History of Dutch Slavery and Slave Trade The four-year project creates an open science infrastructure that connects colonial archives through digitisation and entity recognition, among other things, making it possible to track individuals across different archives.
2025 - 2026 Helpers in Hardship: Uncovering family networks among the enslaved population of Suriname, 1848-1863 We know surprisingly little about the extended family of enslaved people. Helpers in Hardship is the first project to systematically reconstruct family relations among an entire enslaved population. The project uses the recently published Surinamese slave registers and applies historical record linkage to estimate matrilineal family size and composition for approximately 60.000 enslaved persons. Using missionary sources, it additionally reconstructs often neglected patrilineal family networks on four plantations. This way, Helpers in Hardship paves the way for future research into family networks and survival strategies during slavery and provides descendants of enslaved people with valuable information on their family histories. More information
2023 - 2024 Recognizing Extracted Entities for the Historical Database Suriname Curacao: Me and my colleagues explore with the help of the Netherlands eScience Center how automated handwritten text recognition (HTR) technology and entity recognition can be integrated into the workflow of the Historical Database Suriname Curacao (HDSC). More information
2022 - 2024 Diversity and dynamics. The population of Curacao 1839-1950 This proposal aims to reconstruct the entire population of Curacao between 1839 and 1950, which will provide an invaluable source for the general public interested in genealogy and family history as well as open up new fields of scholarly research in the history of the Caribbean, of colonial societies and of slavery. How was community building affected by the island’s ethnic and social diversity? How did individuals and families respond to the regularly recurring food shortages and the changing economic fortunes? What were the repercussions of slavery in the generations after Emancipation? Curacao offers the opportunity to reconstruct a fascinating Caribbean island population over 5-6 generations. This opportunity is unique, not only because Curacao holds what are probably the most complete sources in the Caribbean, but also because the population can be fully reconstructed at very low cost thanks to the generous access to archival sources and the availability of tools already funded by PDI-SSH and Clariah. The data will be published in two formats; 1) transcribed datasets of each archival source, useful for genealogists, school projects and qualitative historians, and 2) a database with reconstructed life courses spanning several generations, useful for social scientists and quantitative historians. More information

Dr M.T. Rosenbaum-Feldbrügge (Matthias)

Publications

Research grants and prizes

Projects

Teaching

Ancillary activities