Delft, 02/07/2022 In your previous letter you asked me how I ended up in historical demography and computational sociology, and I think it's only fair to provide a good answer to that question. In highschool I always had a broad interest, but my main interests were in history and computer science. While studying Computer Science and Compuational Science at the UvA my private genealogy research made me realize that I loved research, and liked explaining human behaviour better than explaining algorithms. I ended up writing two theses about migration behaviour within the Netherlands (both with a link to history as well), which eventually led me to research Dutch union dissolution behaviour at NIDI, where I hope to combine my CS and Dutch demography/history knowledge. This road has definitely been a fun challenge so far!

With kind regards, Willem R. J. Vermeulen