Prof. dr. Elise van Nederveen Meerkerk (1975) is a professor of economic and social history, specialized in the history of labour relations, notably women’s and children’s work. In 2007, she obtained her PhD in Economic and Social History, on women’s work in the early modern Dutch Republic. Elise published in several leading economic and social history journals, such as the Economic History Review, Feminist Economics and the International Review of Social History. She has directed several comparative labour history projects, on the history of textile workers, child labour, domestic workers and sex workers.
Since 2025 Elise is a member of the Royal Dutch Academy of Arts and Sciences and in 2026 she was elected as scientific member of the Royal Holland Society of Sciences. She is also an honorary fellow of the International Institute of Social History (IISH). In 2017-2018 she was a fellow at NIAS (Amsterdam). Furthermore, Elise is chair of the Prof. Van Winter Fund and the NEHA/Unger van Brerofonds.
Between 2018 and 2024 Elise van Nederveen Meerkerk led the ERC Consolidator project Race to the Bottom? Family labour, household livelihood and consumption in the relocation of global cotton manufacturing. This project studied the role of production and consumption bby households in the global relocation of the textile industry between circa 1780 and 1990. Various publications followed from this project.
In 2024, NWO awarded an interdisciplinary consortium with 30 million euros for research on social cohesion (SOCION). Elise was member of the writing group of this program, and is one of the 8 Principal Investigators and member of the SOCION Executive Board. Since September 2025 Elise directs the NWO-Vici Project Care and Coercion.
