Philip Post is a PhD candidate at the Institute for History.

More information about Philip Post

Research

My PhD thesis is focused on studying Dutch colonial culture in Asia between 1700 and 1870. It explores how local experience, colonial knowledge and political thought influenced the way colonial officials perceived the world around them and conceived their own role within that world. In what way did these locally developed colonial cultures spread into the Dutch empire? This PhD is part of the research project ‘Institutional memory in the making of colonial culture: history, experience and ideas in Dutch colonialism in Asia, 1700 – 1870’. The project page contains more information on the research aims of the project group and explains how my thesis is a part of this.  

Curriculum vitae

I studied Cultuurwetenschappen (Cultural sciences) in Maastricht for my BA and hold a MA in History (cum laude) and a MSc in Political Science (bene meritum) from the Radboud University in Nijmegen. I have been an intern for six months at the Scientific Council for Government Policy (WRR) in The Hague and I have worked for almost three years as a junior lecturer at Maastricht University. At Maastricht I obtained my University Teaching Qualification (BKO) in 2018. During my studies I have done most of my research on Baruch Spinoza and Denis Diderot. In my thesis on Diderot I investigated how he used the concept of nature to rethink Christian (sexual) ethics. My fields of interest are the history of (Dutch) colonialism, postcolonial debates and the Enlightenment. 

Publications