Lisanne Walma has an MA in American Studies from Utrecht University. In 2013 she received the Theodore Roosevelt American History Award for her masters thesis on the national war memorials in Washington, D.C. She examines twentieth century Dutch debates on narcotics for her PhD at Utrecht University. Her research is part of the Translantis project, where researchers use digitised newspapers to study the role of references to the United States in Dutch public discourse in the twentieth century. She is currently working on an article that discusses the way references to American narcotic use influenced Dutch public debates on alcohol and drugs in the 1920s.
Beyond the classroom, more visualisations and apps may allow a broader audience to engage with the outcomes of American Studies research. A barrier to digital presentation is that it often does not receive the same credit as a monograph or a peer-reviewed journal article. Even when a website or an app is an obvious outlet to publish a mixture of different sources, scholars still feel compelled to publish a book.