Patrick Bek, PhD 2016-2021, completed his dissertation on transport poverty and social exclusion in twentieth-century Netherlands, entitled, No Bicycle, No Bus, No Job: The Making of Workers’ Mobility, 1920-1990 (Amsterdam University Press, 2021). His research examines how and why people’s access to everyday mobility in the Netherlands changed over time and along lines of class, gender, and ethnicity. Who benefitted from new forms of urban mobility like bicycles, buses, and cars? Why were some people included and others excluded by the modernization of urban mobility? In researching these questions, he uses life histories (diaries, letters), business and human resource archives, and policy documents from local, national and provincial governments.

With Sue-Yen Tjong Tjin Tai he is working on the cycling experience in Singapore over the past hundrerd years.

He received his BA in History of International Relations from Erasmus University and his MA from Leiden University in European Expansion and Globalization.