Lotte van de Pol is a specialist in social, cultural, and economic history, and women's history of early modern Europe. She received her Ph.D. at the Erasmus University of Rotterdam, and held positions at the Erasmus University and the Dutch Open University. Her book with Rudolf Dekker, The Tradition of Female Transvestism in Early Modern Europe (1989), was translated into five languages. Her research into early modern prostitution resulted in two books, one of which was also translated in several languages. From 2004 to 2007 she worked at the Friedrich Meineke Institute of the Faculty of History of the Free University in Berlin as a member of the research group Egodocuments in Transcultural Perspectives.