Berrie has a background in Media Studies and is currently working on his dissertation that focuses on the discursive formation of ecstasy in newspaper and radio debates. It will contribute to the fields of drug history and digital humanities. He uses digital search strategies to structurally research the newspaper dataset of the National Library of the Netherlands (KB) and the radio dataset of the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision (NISV) in an attempt to write a detailed account of how coexisting perspectives on ecstasy originated and developed in the Dutch public debates. He was involved in the development of the CLARIAH Media Suite, an innovative media analysis environment: in a 9 month research pilot he helped to make the Media Suite useful for historical cross-media public debate research.
While finishing his dissertation, Berrie has started work as a postdoctoral researcher in Homo Medicinalis (HoMed).