In the Vox podcast In a Nutshell, hosts Jara Majerus and Antonia Leise take a deep dive into the university's most interesting, strange, and exciting research. Every two weeks, they invite Radboud researchers to talk about their favourite topics – explained in bite-sized episodes. In today's episode, Jara investigates what a ball field can tell us about identity, exclusion and belonging.

How can sports be inclusive and exclusive at the same time? What can baseball tell us about Dutch colonialism? And how can sports be a means of identification?

In the first episode of 2025, Jara investigates the intersection of baseball and politics. Together with her guest Jan Bant, she explores notions of identity, belonging, and exclusion by taking a close look at what happens on the ball field.

Jan is a PhD candidate at the Department of History, Art History and Classics. He is interested in the past and present of colonialism, the Caribbean, and Transatlantic relations. For his PhD, he analyses baseball’s role in Caribbean communities in the Netherlands and the Caribbean communities since 1950.

Do you want to know more about how baseball can teach us about colonialism, belonging and identity? Follow Jan’s tips and watch the documentary series Homerun Curaçao and the documentary Boys of Summer. Or read Honkbalgoud. Hoe Nederland de wereld veroverde en honkbalgeschiedenis schreef by Maarten Kolsloot and Wesley Meijer, Honkbalgoud.