Benjamin B. Roberts, Ph.D.


(photographer: Paulien Kleijgijn)

is an independent historian based in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. He was born in 1965 and raised on a dairy farm in Montague, New Jersey in the most north-western region of the state. Stemming from a Dutch mother and long line of Dutch immigrant farmers on his father’s side that settled in Colonial New York and New Jersey in the seventeenth and eighteenth century, Benjamin became intrigued with history and decided to study Dutch history at the Vrije Universiteit of Amsterdam, where he later earned his Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Early Modern European History. In 1998 he received his Ph.D. from the Rijksuniversiteit of Groningen on Dutch child-rearing practices in the 17th and 18th century. His current research projects include youth culture and masculinity in the early seventeenth century and Dutch culture and identity in the rural communities of Colonial New York and New Jersey. He also works as a freelance writer for various publications such as Time Out Amsterdam.