Vincent Veerbeek
Research  |  2023-24

Finland

Vincent Veerbeek is a visiting scholar from the University of Helsinki in Finland, where he is a doctoral researcher in the program in History and Cultural Heritage.

Vincent graduated from Radboud University in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, with a BA in American Studies (2018) and an MA in Historical Studies (2020). In recent years, his research has focused on government-run boarding schools for Native American children in the United States. In 2019, he spent time at the University of California, Riverside to research the music program of Sherman Institute, and he wrote his master’s thesis on the use of scrip as part of the economic education at the school. Currently, Vincent is working on a doctoral dissertation about boarding school marching bands and their Native American directors with the preliminary title "In Tune With the Nation? Marching Bands and Native American Innfluences on Music Education at United States Off-reservation Boarding Schools, 1879-1941."

At UNM, Vincent is hosted by Dr. Melissa Bokovoy from the History Department. As a Fulbright visiting scholar, he has worked with the collections of the university's Center for Southwest Research and other material in Zimmerman Library relating both to the history of government schools in New Mexico like Albuquerque Indian School and Santa Fe Indian School, and to the boarding school system at large. Vincent conducted research at UNM from September 2023 to March 2024.