Sebastiaan Broere (1989) holds bachelor degrees in history and philosophy from Utrecht University and master degrees from Utrecht University (History and Philosophy of Science) and University of California, Los Angeles (History). Sebastiaan is primarily interested in the politics of knowledge, which he examines by looking at various historically situated fields of expertise. He has published on the history of agricultural science, race, psychiatry, asylum care, and veterinary medicine, often in contexts of colonization and decolonization. His PhD thesis, A Matter of Life or Death: Agriculture and the Politics of Knowledge in Postwar Indonesia (1945-1967), delves into the history of agricultural development in Sukarno-era Indonesia.
Broere's master thesis (HPS) In and Out of Magelang Asylum: A Social History of Colonial Psychiatry in the Netherlands Indies, 1923-1942 has been awarded the 2017 Pieter van Foreestprijs and got the second award of the 2015 Volkskrant-IISG Thesis Award. This thesis was also shortlisted for the 2015 Huygens-Descartes Thesis Award.
His article ‘Picturing Ethnopsychology: A Colonial Psychiatrist’s Struggles to Examine Javanese Minds, 1910-1925’ was granted the Best Journal Article Award 2019 by the Society for the History of Psychology.
Treasurer for Gewina, the Belgium-Dutch association for the history of science and universities.