David de Boer

David de Boer is an assistant professor of political history at Radboud University Nijmegen and a postdoctoral research at the University of Amsterdam. He is broadly interested in how people in the past thought about moral obligation, created transnational solidarity networks, and managed migration in a globalizing world.

His award-winning first book, The Early Modern Dutch Press in an Age of Religious Persecution: The Making of Humanitarianism (Oxford University Press, open access, 2023) explores how 17th century refugees leveraged the printing press to draw international attention to their suffering – thereby laying the foundations for modern humanitarianism.

David studied history at Utrecht University and received his PhD from the University of Konstanz and Leiden University (joint doctoral degree). He was a visiting scholar at the German Historical Institute Washington, the European University Institute, the Leibniz Institute of European History, and Harvard University.