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'.
