Martijn Veenendaal graduated cum laude from Utrecht University in the Netherlands, where he received a BA in History in 2015 and a minor in American Studies. His bachelor thesis examined the relation between the development of a hybrid “Indies” architectural style in the Dutch East Indies, and a growing autonomy of the colony from its mother country during the period 1920-1940.
Martijn’s fields of interest include migration, colonialism, race, nationalism, and the history of imperial and early-Soviet Russia. He hopes to expand his knowledge of and enthusiasm for these topics at Columbia and LSE. He especially looks forward to explore how perceptions of Eastern and Western “others” might have sustained the building of the Russian empire, often perceived as a borderland between East and West. In the future, Martijn would like to pursue a career in academia and make (preferably insightful) contributions to historiographic debates.
