Harry Oosterhuis (1958) studied history at University of Groningen (1976-1983) and sociology at the Graduate School for Social Science of the Universities of Amsterdam and Leiden (1987-1991). His dissertation (1992) is about the changing attitudes of Dutch Catholics  towards homosexuality in the twentieth century as a result of shifting relations between religion on the one hand and medical and mental health care on the other.

Since 1992 he is a lecturer in history at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences of Maastricht University. He is also affiliated to the Huizinga Research School for Cultural History in Amsterdam. He teaches courses on the modernisation of the Western world, historiography, and the history of the biomedical and human sciences. His research focuses on the cultural and social history of psychiatry and mental health care, of sexuality and gender, of health and citizenship and of bicycling. Between 1999-2008 he co-directed a NWO-funded research-project on the twentieth-century history of psychiatry and mental health care in the Netherlands.

He is (co-)author and co-editor of:

Loughnan, Arlie & Harry Oosterhuis (Eds.) (2014). International Journal of Law and Psychiatry 37 (1), Special issue: Historical perspectives on forensic medicine.

Huisman, Frank & Harry Oosterhuis (Eds.) (2014). Health and Citizenship: Political Cultures of Health in Modern Europe. London/Brookfield: Pickering & Chatto.

Oosterhuis, Harry & Marijke Gijswijt-Hofstra (2008). Verward van geest en ander ongerief. Psychiatrie en geestelijke gezondheidszorg in Nederland (1870-2005) (3 Volumes) Houten: Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Geneeskunde/Bohn Stafleu Van Lochum.

Gijswijt-Hofstra, Marijke, Harry Oosterhuis, Joost Vijselaar & Hugh Freeman (Eds.) (2005). Psychiatric Cultures Compared. Psychiatry and Mental Health Care in the Twentieth Century: Comparisons and Approaches. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.

Oosterhuis, Harry and Michael Neve (Eds.) (2004). Social Psychiatry and Psychotherapy in the Twentieth Century: Anglo-Dutch-German Perspectives. Medical History 47/4.

Oosterhuis, Harry (2000). Stepchildren of Nature. Krafft-Ebing, Psychiatry, and the Making of Sexual Identity. Chicago & London: The University of Chicago Press.

Eder, Franz X., Gert Hekma & Harry Oosterhuis (Eds.) (1998). Homosexualitäten. Österreichische Zeit­schrift für Ge­schichtswissenschaften 9/3.

Hekma, Gert, Harry Oosterhuis & James Steakley (Eds.) (1995). Gay Men and the Sexual History of the Political Left. London & New York: The Haworth Press, Harrington Park Press.

Oosterhuis, Harry (1992). Homoseksualiteit in katholiek Nederland. Een sociale geschie­denis 1900-1970. Amsterdam: Sua.

Oosterhuis, Harry & Hubert Kennedy (1992). Homosexuality and Male Bonding in Pre-Nazi Germany. The Youth Movement, the Gay Movement and Male Bonding Before Hitler's Rise: Original Transcripts From Der Eigene, the First Gay Journal in the World. London & New York: The Haworth Press, Harrington Park Press.