Maurits Meerwijk is a researcher at the Institute for History.

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Fields of interest

Maurits is a historian of medicine and colonialism working on the Dutch East Indies. He obtained his PhD from the University of Hong Kong where he completed a thesis on the history of the viral mosquito-borne disease dengue fever in modern Asia. Afterwards, he joined St Andrews University as a research fellow with the ERC-project Visual Representations of the Third Plague Pandemic. Maurits has publications in several journals and edited volumes. His first book on the history of plague and plague photography in the Dutch East Indies will come out with Cornell University Press in late 2022. Maurits recently started his new research project Histories of Health Messaging in Southeast Asia, 1895 – 1945 which examines the origins and early development of the use of visual materials in public health education in this region. This study of what was often called “medical propaganda” is focused on the Dutch East Indies, French Indochina, and the U.S.-occupied Philippines.