Maartje Janse is a lecturer in Dutch history in transnational context at Leiden University. She is a scholar of protest, social movements and popular politics, currently writing a transnational history of the ‘invention’ of the pressure group in the nineteenth century. She coordinates the Global Abolitionisms Network that is linked to the Leiden Slavery Studies Association. In 2009 she was awarded a Veni Grant from the Dutch Council for Scientific Research (NWO) for her project ‘Organizing the Masses: The Contested Nature of Early Irish, British and American Pressure Groups, 1825-1845’. After that she coordinated, with Henk te Velde, the programme ‘The Promise of Organization: Political Associations, 1820-1890, Debate and Practice’.

Anne-Lot Hoek is a research journalist with a background in contemporary history. She has been working on issues concerning human rights violations and liberation movements in Namibia and the history of development aid in Africa at the Africa Study Centre in Leiden. More recently she has been involved in the Dutch media on issues relating to the Dutch military performance in Indonesia in 1945 – 1949. She participated in a research fellowship at NIAS (Amsterdam), and is currently working on a PhD/book about the Indonesian independence war on the island of Bali under the supervision of Peter Romijn (Niod/University of Amsterdam) and Remco Raben (Utrecht University/University of Amsterdam). She is also involved in the government-sponsored project ‘Decolonization, violence and war in Indonesia 1945-1950’ at the KITLV in Leiden.