Geert is Senior Lecturer in History of Science at Maastricht University, the Netherlands. He was educated at the Free University, Amsterdam, the University of California, San Diego, and Utrecht University, and has held research fellowships at Uppsala Universitet and the Chemical Heritage Foundation in Philadelphia. Between 2014 and 2017 he was Marie Curie International Outgoing fellow at Columbia University, the Dutch Institute in Rome, and the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science. Geert was academic coordinator of the Graduate School for Arts and Social Sciences at Maastricht, from its start in 2008 till 2013, and was PhD Training Coordinator of the Netherlands Graduate Research School for Science, Technology and Modern Culture (2013-2014).
Geert’s research focuses on international dimensions of science and their public representation. He is particularly interested in idealizations of science as a model for international relations. In 2012 he published Neutrality in Twentieth-Century Europe: Intersections of Science, Culture and Politics after the First World War (edited with Rebecka Lettevall and Sven Widmalm), in 2016 Pursuing the Unity of Science: Ideology and Scientific Practice from the Great War to the Cold War (edited with Harmke Kamminga), both with Routledge. Geert just completed the EU-funded project “‘Science and World Order’: Uses of Science in Plans for International Government, 1899-1950”, the latest output of which is “Science, Fascism, and Foreign Policy. The Exhibition Scienza Universale at the 1942 Rome World’s Fair”, Isis, 108/4, pp.769-791.