Dr. Harry Oosterhuis

Biography

Harry Oosterhuis studied history at the University of Groningen (1976-1983) and sociology at the Graduate School of Social Science, Universities of Amsterdam and Leiden (1987-1991). His dissertation, completed in 1992, addressed changing attitudes of Dutch Catholics towards homosexuality in the twentieth century, particularly during the shifting relations among religion, medicine, and mental health care. Oosterhuis has been a lecturer in history at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at Maastricht University since 1992 and is affiliated with the Huizinga Research School for Cultural History in Amsterdam. His teaching covers modernisation in the Western world, historiography, and the history of biomedical human sciences. Oosterhuis's research primarily focuses on cultural and social history as it pertains to psychiatry, mental health care, sexuality, gender, health, citizenship, and bicycling. He co-directed an NWO-funded research project on the history of psychiatry and mental health care in the Netherlands from 1999 to 2008, and has authored or edited numerous works on these subjects, contributing to prestigious journals and publishing books that explore the intersection of psychiatry and social history.

Research Interests