Patrick Bek, senior researcher Poverty & Inclusion at Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences, received his BA in History of International Relations from Erasmus University Rotterdam and his MA Global and Colonial History from Leiden University. At Eindhoven University of Technology he completed his PhD (2016-2021) dissertation on mobility poverty, entitled, No Bicycle, No Bus, No Job: The Making of Workers’ Mobility in the Netherlands, 1920-1990 (Amsterdam University Press, 2022). In this book he examines how and why blue-collar workers, industrial employers, and the state shaped workers’ everyday commute in a changing playing field of uneven power relations that shifted from paternalism to neo-liberalism.

With Sue-Yen Tjong Tjin Tai and Henk-Jan Dekker he is currently researching the cycling experience in late colonial Singapore.