PHD
PhD Thesis Title: Twentieth-Century Dutch Caribbean Reproductive Politics
PhD Supervisor: Nicole Bourbonnais
My doctoral research explores twentieth-century reproductive politics in the Dutch Caribbean, with a focus on Suriname and the Netherlands Antilles and their connections to the Dutch metropole between the 1920s and 1990s. I am interested in how colonial legacies, local actors, and transnational agendas intersected to shape reproductive autonomy and inequality. Through a historical and multidisciplinary approach, I examine how broader sociopolitical transformations, particularly decolonization, reshaped intimate life in these former territories of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Working with archival materials, newspapers, and oral histories, I trace how ideas about fertility and family life evolved, and how reproduction became a contested terrain of power.
PROFILE
Natasja Nietvelt is a PhD researcher at the Department of International History and Politics. Broadly, her research explores how gendered, sexual, and racialized power relations have shaped population governance and reproductive politics within colonial and postcolonial contexts. She is particularly interested in how global and transnational forms of body regulation intersected with questions of emancipation, justice, and societal organization. Natasja holds an MSc in Political Science from Ghent University in Belgium and, in 2025, completed her interdisciplinary MA in International and Development Studies at the Graduate Institute with a specialization in Gender, Race, and Diversity.
Publications and Works
- “Gendered Struggles in Post-Colonial Contexts: Women's Reproductive Rights in the Post-Colony,” The Graduate Institute, Geneva. September 19, 2024. (Blog Post)
Research Interests
- Gender, sexuality, and empire/nation
- Population policies and fertility politics
- Reproductive health, rights, and justice
- Colonialism, decolonization, postcolonialism
- Intersectional inequalities and emancipation
- Societal organization, global governance
- Transnational body governance