Mary-Anne Nicolaas is a PhD researcher at the KITLV. Her research is part of the project ‘How slaves became citizens: Proto-citizenship, empowerment, and inequality in the Age of Emancipation, 1770-1930’. Her research involves proto citizenship in Surinam during the age of slavery and aims at analyzing the emancipatory process of the enslaved people in the Dutch empire.

Nicolaas has a BA in American Studies (Amerikanistiek) and a MA in Military History, both obtained at the University of Amsterdam. During her studies she was mainly interested in colonial and political research topics. Her BA thesis was about the introduction of the minimum wage laws (Fair Labor Standards Act) in the United States and its impact on the employment of African American labourers. Her MA thesis The war that made America and the Franco-Indian alliance pertained to the French and Indian War and the native contribution to the French military strategy.