Who am I?

My name is Jelle, 31 years old, from the Netherlands. I also spend a lot of my time in Latvia.

As I mentioned on the home page, I mainly do research, analysis, and writing with a strong regional focus on the Baltic states and wider Eastern Europe. I have worked in various fields and disciplines, but lately I have focussed on journalism, for the simple reason that I really love writing. You can find examples of my work on this website.

I have a master’s degree in International Relations from Leiden University and a master’s degree in East European and Eurasian Studies from the University of Bologna.

Fields of expertise#

I have specialised in the Baltics and Central and Eastern Europe for well over a decade. Within that scope, my particular fields of expertise are:

• Geopolitics
  • Russian and NATO foreign policy
• European politics
  • EU enlargement
  • Cohesion policy
• Political economy
  • Economics of transition (from planned to market economies)
• Fiscal and monetary policy
• Political philosophy
  • Nationalism and nation-building (politics of memory)
  • Communism

Economic miracles and nation-building#

It was stories such as the ‘Estonian economic miracle’ and the ‘Polish miracle’ that long ago triggered my interest in economic, fiscal and monetary policy. Starting in the 1990s, a group of countries emerging from the ruins of communism in Europe was faced with the task of reinventing themselves, their institutions, and the relationship to their citizens. Often lagging light years behind their Western European neighbours, some did so very successfully, with highly innovative reform agendas that sometimes challenged established fiscal and monetary thinking in the West.

Unfortunately, some other countries failed to successfully reform their institutions and economies. In 2021, I wrote my master’s thesis about the obstacles to foreign direct investment (FDI) and economic growth in Ukraine, at the time Europe’s poorest country by GDP per capita (current USD).

Studying a group of countries that were liberated from the (direct or indirect) yoke of the Soviet Union sparked a further interest. Their ‘reinvention’ also came with questions of identity and processes of nation-building, in a part of Europe where the concept of the nation-state was not yet so firmly entrenched.

Thanks to having studied these developments extensively, I can now endlessly contemplate the idea of monetary sovereignty, the transcience and relativity of the nation-state, or theories of state developmentalism.

And more…#

I like to think of myself as more than a CV, so I’ll include some additional information about who I am.

A good deal of my spare time is spent reading books. I particularly like philosophy, history, and dystopian novels.

I’ve always had a bit of itchy feet. I like to travel around Europe, to admire its nature, history, and culture. Over the past decade, I have lived in various places across the continent. My Nikon camera is a loyal companion.

I grew up playing football, which remains my #1 sport to this day. In recent years I have become an avid runner who likes to do the occasional half marathon. On top of that, I like to take out my road bike, play a game of tennis or padel, or go for a hike.

The rest is subscribers-only. 😉