Lisanne Walma is a historian. She received her bachelor’s degree in Pharmacy and her master’s in American Studies from Utrecht University. In 2013 she won the Theodore Roosevelt American Research Award for her master’s thesis on the history of national war memorials in the United States.

During her doctoral studies at Utrecht University she developed an interest in public debates about narcotics and the boundaries between medical and nonmedical use. In 2020 she received her PhD for her dissertation Between Morpheus and Mary: The Public Debate on Morphine in Dutch Newspapers, 1880–1939. During her doctoral studies she was also involved in the development and teaching of bachelor’s and master’s courses on addiction, as well as the organization of several international history conferences. She has published articles on transnational drug debates, as well as reflections on the use of digitized newspapers as new sources for historians.

Since November 2020 she is a part of the GONACI project as a researcher for the case study “Junkie Kingdoms”: Open Drug Scenes and the Narcotic City. She will primarily focus on researching open drugs scenes in Rotterdam in the late twentieth century.