“The great thing about being a journalist,” Middle East correspondent Thomas Erdbrink told me when I interviewed him, “is that you can ask anyone anything, and no one will ever question why you want to know.” This felt like official permission for a lifelong habit of asking one question too many.
I’m a Dutch journalist and researcher covering global security, political conflicts, and human rights abuses. Based in Paris, I hold an MA in International Security from Sciences Po, where I minored in Media and Writing. I’ve previously worked at the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ security directorate, where I conducted investigations on sanctions and arms exports. I’ve further reported and produced multimedia stories for various outlets, including Are We Europe and the International Crisis Group. In my reporting, I draw on data, open-source intelligence, and interviews to make complex issues intelligible to wider audiences.
A BIT ABOUT ME
Portfolio
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Israel’s undeclared nuclear arsenal at Dimona lies beyond international oversight. This op-ed argues that indulging Israel’s nuclear exceptionalism is fueling a regional arms race whose political, economic, and potentially literal fallout could be global.
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In the Russian and Ukrainian Orthodox churches of Paris, clergy and congregants struggle to reconcile spiritual duty with the politics of Putin’s war, revealing a community split by a distant front line.
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This review of Bret Easton Ellis’s The Shards dissects its blend of Hollywood nostalgia, queasy violence, and autofiction, asking how close the author dares to write to life and where the line lies.
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Following Dutch journalist Thomas Erdbrink from a quiet village in the Netherlands to Taliban-ruled Kabul, this profile explores how a seemingly casual correspondent built a career in one of the world’s most volatile areas.
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Somewhere along the Turkish coast, a father and daughter share their last holiday together, which slowly reveals itself as a study of memory and mental illness. The review considers how the film’s power lives in the pauses—in all the things that go unsaid between parent and child.
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Sketching a portrait of the young naturalist Dara McAnulty, this review of Diary of a Young Naturalist examines how a teenager’s diary about birds, bogs, and his own bewilderment becomes a fierce call to protect the world around us.
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In this personal essay, what begins as a night out in a packed club queue turns into a panic attack and a series of reflections on public safety, exposing how identity and policing collide in city life.
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On a Dutch campus, news of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine spreads through common rooms and group chats, turning distant headlines into tense, personal reckonings for Ukrainian and Russian students living side by side.
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From Miley C to Cardi B, this essay questions whether hypersexual music videos reclaim women’s bodies or simply repackage old objectification under the glossy label of empowerment.
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During the Amsterdam Light Festival, a simple search for a public bathroom turns into a wry investigation into accessibility in urban spaces and how cities routinely overlook women’s most basic needs.
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On a campus quad, fleeting encounters with semi-strangers—classmates, party acquaintances, people from intro week—become a meditation on how we say hello, wave, nod, and quietly move on in life.