Jessie van Straaten is a PhD candidate in the Economic and Social History team of Leiden University. Specific interests include social history, health, medical history, family and care, and the history of children and old age. For her dissertation, she is conducting research on housing for older people in the period 1945-1990. The perspectives of older people themselves and their interest groups are central to this history. She graduated from Leiden University and obtained her master's degree with a thesis on patterns in patient admission and mortality between 1867 and 1915 at the Stadsziekenhuis in Hoorn.