Education

2017-2019 MA in Literatures and Cultures of North America in International Perspective (cum laude), Radboud University Nijmegen

2014-2017 BA in English Language and Culture, specialisation American Studies, Radboud University Nijmegen

2016 Exchange semester, University of Western Ontario, Canada

Awards and grants

2020 DAAD Graduate School Scholarship

2018 ACSN Student Research Award

Winter Semester 2024/25

Undergraduate:

Canada Before Confederation, Anne van der Pas, Tuesdays, 10:00-12:00

Winter Semester 2022/23

Undergraduate:

Indigenous Identity and Settler Colonialism in Canada, Lea Kröner and Anne van der Pas, Tuesdays, 12:00-14:00

Research Interests

• First Nations studies
• Canadian nationalism
• Citizenship and identity
• Indigenous language revitalisation

Dissertation project

(In)voluntary Enfranchisement: The Institutionalisation of Indigenous Identity in Canadian Governmental Policy

In my PhD project, I investigate the Canadian government policy of enfranchisement which determined the legal definition of the term ‘Indian’ in Canada for over a century. For most of its existence, the policy deprived Indigenous Canadians of their so-called ‘Indian status’ and the associated treaty rights in exchange for full Canadian citizenship. While some First Nations people, often motivated by economic reasons, voluntarily applied for enfranchisement, the vast majority of Indigenous Canadians who lost their Indian status in the period between 1876 and 1985 were enfranchised involuntarily, for example through marriage to a non-Indian man, by serving in the Canadian armed forces, or as a result of completing higher education. 

I utilise a policy community approach in order to investigate the role of enfranchisement within the larger federal Canadian Indian policy and its function in relation to the paternalistic, patriarchal, assimilationist policy goals of the Canadian government.  In my analysis I will be focusing on three key groups within the policy making process: federal officials, local and provincial officials, and First Nations officials and activists.