Tijmen van Voorthuizen is a PhD-candidate at the department of History and Art History. His research interest include the modern history of sexuality and (queer) nightlife, masculinity as well as the history of space, urban design and urban planning. He obtained his MA degree at the 木瓜福利影视 of Amsterdam. For his master's thesis on the history of male homosexuality in Amsterdam between 1890 and 1940 he was awarded the prize for best thesis of the UvA Humanities Faculty for the year 2023 as well as the Volkskrant/IISG Scriptieprijs 2023.
He currently works on a PhD research project on the emotional and spatial history of Queer Bars in the Low Countries from the 1900s until the present. As queer bars are disappearing across the world more and more people and institutions have take it upon themselves to organize all kinds of (digital) heritage initiatives, to document and preserve the histories of certain bars. By tracing the emotional and spatial history and integrating the fields of history and heritage studies, this project attempts to answer the question of why bars are considered so important for queer people to attempt to make them into heritage sites.