Milja van Tielhof

Biography

Milja van Tielhof is senior researcher, specialized in economic history and the history of water management. She studied History at Leiden University where she also gained her PhD. She was lecturer and postdoc at the universities of Leiden and Utrecht and the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam, and also worked at ABN AMRO historical department for some years. Since 2007, she has been working at Huygens Institute. She was programme-director of “Voluntary associations in the Netherlands in the 19th century” for four years, and developed and coordinated a programme on the political culture in water management 1200-1800, “In search of the Poldermodel”, which received a grant from NWO and was carried out in cooperation with the University of Utrecht and the Vrije Universiteit. Her current research concerns the impact of droughts on the supply of drinking water in Dutch cities in the early modern period, as part of the NWO-program “Coping with drought”, a collaboration of Huygens Institute with the Vrije Universiteit. Her publications include books on the early modern grain trade, the history of banks during World War II and water management before the nineteenth century.