Auke Rijpma

Dr. Auke Rijpma is an Assistant Professor in Economic and Social History at Utrecht University's Faculty of Humanities. His research focuses on quantitative methods, wellbeing measurement, public services, and the relationship between family structures and economic development. He is affiliated with the Institutions for Open Societies (IOS) research initiative, which examines societal resilience and development patterns.

Rijpma's research interests integrate economic history, social dynamics, and data science. Key themes include:

• Development of multidimensional wellbeing metrics for historical analysis
• Impact of colonialism on demographic and economic systems
• Quantitative analysis of inequality and social mobility
• Digital humanities approaches to historical datasets

His publications demonstrate consistent focus on historical inequality, colonial economies, and wellbeing measurement across diverse contexts like the Dutch colonial empire and pandemic responses. Recent work emphasizes computational methods in humanities research, including knowledge graph applications and crowdsourced data projects.

Rijpma has contributed to major infrastructure projects including:

• CLARIAH: Developing structured data hubs for humanities research (NWO-funded)
• Clio Infra: Creating global datasets on historical inequality (NWO-funded)
• Agency, Gender, and Economic Development: Analyzing global institutional impacts (2011-2015)