past projects

Past projects

Srefidensi Foto - RCMC

Srefidensi Foto

To mark 40 years of Surinamese independence, artist and researcher Sara Blokland together with FOTODOK initiated the project Srefidensi.
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TM-3444-5. Een plantagedirecteur met huismeid en huisjongen. T. (Théodore) Bray, (1818 - 1887) - RCMC

Materializing Slavery

Materializing Slavery is an ongoing research project on the materiality of enslavement and its afterlives in the present.
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Mixtec Artefacts - RCMC

Turbulent Lives | 2016-2017

Two large-scale research initiatives that aim to study the object biography and cultural context of several Mixtec artefacts from Mexico.
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Globalisation, Photography and Race - RCMC

Globalisation, Photography and Race

This project addresses the intersection of new digital technologies and Aboriginal traditions surrounding visual imagery.
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HERA SINGLE - RCMC

Creating the 'New' Asian Woman

Entanglements of Urban Space, Cultural Encounters and Gendered Identities in Shanghai and Delhi (SINGLE) deals with the representation of single women in China and India.
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CoHERE - RCMC

CoHERE - Critical Heritages: performing and representing identities in Europe

CoHERE explores the ways in which European identities are constructed through heritage representations and performances.
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RICHES - RCMC

RICHES | 2015-2017

RICHES researched the context of change in which European cultural heritage is transmitted, its future implications, and inclusive frameworks for the digital age.
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The Popular Culture of Illegality - Research Center for Material Culture

The Popular Culture of Illegality

This project studies the popular culture through which the socio-political authority of criminal gangs is produced in Latin America and Caribbean countries.
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Baggage and Belonging - RCMC

Baggage and Belonging: Military Collections and the British Empire (1750-1900)

Focussing on military campaigns in India and Africa from 1750 to 1900, this project will undertake an interdisciplinary reappraisal of military collections.
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Museum Affordances - RCMC

Museum Affordances

Can historical ethnographic collections transcend the colonial contexts of their collection and be used as resources for decolonisation?
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SWICH - RCMC

Sharing a World of Inclusion, Creativity and Heritage (SWICH)

SWICH explores the role that ethnographic and world cultures museums can play in processes of citizenship and belonging in contemporary Europe.
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Photo © Leopoldo Peña - RCMC

Playing with Tradition?

This project explores the role of sport in society, especially in processes of migration, globalisation, and community and identity formation.
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Highlights from Arabia - RCMC

Highlights from Arabia in the Leiden Collections

This project focuses on the late nineteenth and early-twentieth-century collections on Western Arabia in Museum Volkenkunde and the University Library Leiden.
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Framing Indonesian Art - RCMC

Framing Indonesian Art

This research project focuses on how ‘Islam’ was collected, categorized and exhibited in Dutch museums, in particular the almost total absence of Indonesia.
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Practicing Neighborhood Rituals

Buurtsalon - Mijn Ritueel

How can the Museum re-imagine its role and responsibilities in the community in which it is embedded?
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tm-6424-63a - Activate - RCMC

Activate

Activate is a series of projects intended to uncover the contemporary meanings of our collections for local and global stakeholders.
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Maori Waka in Leiden - RCMC

Vivian Mac Gillavry

Can the waka be seen as an 'ambassador project' and represent Maori people?
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Handelsmuseum - RCMC

Caroline Spijkers

De introductie van het economisch belang van de koloniën bij het Nederlands publiek (Dutch).
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Wayang Kulit - Photo Tentrem Yogyakarta - RCMC

Eva Christiane von Reumont

Applying 'Western' Conservation Ethics onto Javanese Wayang Kulit.
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Afrika Museum - RCMC

Katie M. Sandels

An ethnographic exploration of cultural representations of 'Africa' in the Buitenmuseum, Afrika Museum.
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Anka Bosma MA - RCMC

Anke Bosma

Decolonizing Dutch Ethnographic Museums? An analysis of the coloniality of exhibiting war loot.
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MA de Jong - RCMC

Charlotte de Jong

Sámi Identity Representation and Revitalization in Northern Norway.
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RV-5899-17 - RCMC

Diasporic Connections: Ghana 60 Years After

To mark the 60 anniversary of Ghana’s independence in 1957, the RCMC along with Imagine IC organized a year-long series of events.
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Pacific Presences - RCMC

Pacific Presences | 2013-2018

This project investigates the art and history of the Pacific and Europe’s engagement with Oceania through ethnographic collections found in European museums.
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Zwart Beraad - Bijlmer 50 Years - RCMC

Bijlmer 50 Years

How is and was the Bijlmer important for Amsterdam and its citizens? With this series we aim to highlight the agency in the Bijlmer over the years. 
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Koninklijk Instituut voor de Tropen

Entangled in History

The Tropenmuseum and the Royal Tropical Institute, KIT are collaboratively working on the research project Entangled in History. The project researches, interprets and presents the stories of the KIT building, also home of the museum, for a broader public.
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Kotomisi
COMMUNITY PROJECT | 2019

The Koto

Since 2016, the RCMC/Tropenmuseum and Imagine IC have collaborated on a series of projects that exp

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duval
COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH PROJECT

The Critical Visitor: Intersectional Approaches for Rethinking & Retooling Accessibility and Inclusivity in Heritage Spaces

COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH PROJECT | 2020 - 2024

The Research Center for Material Culture will work

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maarten
RESEARCH PROJECT | 2019 - 2023

Taking Care

RESEARCH PROJECT | Ethnographic and World Cultures Museums as Spaces of Care

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Research Center for Material Culture - Gerbrands lecture

Adriaan Gerbrands Lectures

The Adriaan Gerbrands lecture is an annual public lecture by a laureate chosen for their contribution to the broad international field of the study of visual and material culture. 
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hijra

Un/Engendering the Collections: Rethinking Gender in the Ethnographic Museum

Un/Engendering the Collections: Rethinking Gender in the Ethnographic Museum forms part of our long term research and collecting interest not just to better engage the role of our museum in the study and representation of gender formations in the global context, but also to propose new collecting practices addressed when gender and sexuality as critical categories of analysis are considered outside a purely European Enlightenment tradition.
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hvheh
RESEARCH PROJECT | 2019 - 2020

Het Verleden Heeft een Huis

Een complexe verstrengeling van herinneren en vergeten, van bewuste verloochening en onbewuste onwetendheid en van moedwillige maar ook onopzettelijke ontkenning.
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cup
RESEARCH PROJECT | 2021 - 2025

Pressing Matter: Ownership, Value and the Question of Colonial Heritage in Museums

RESEARCH PROJECT | 2021 - 2025

The National Museum of World Cultures (NMVW) and the Vrije Unive

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iic
IMAGINE IC PROJECT | 2020

Religious Homes: The Role of Religion in the process of Homemaking

Since 2016, the RCMC/Tropenmuseum and Imagine IC have collaborated on a series of projects that explore i

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gate
RESEARCH CLUSTER | 2021 - 2023

Race, Slavery, Colonialism and Capitalism

RESEARCH CLUSTER | 2021 - 

This project is a three-year collaboration between the Cen

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koto

Collection Research | The technique and/as experience of Afro-Surinamese costume

RESEARCH ASSOCIATE RESEARCH | Jane Stjeward-Schubert, Ella Broek, Michelle Piergoelam

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istemena

Collection Research | Textile practices as ways to heal, care and resist

RESEARCH ASSOCIATE RESEARCH | Luisa Michelsen, Magdalena Wiener

In regard to the exte

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extended family
COLLABORATIVE PROJECT

Extended Family

Meet our Extended Family, a long-term commitment to collaboration 

As a mission drive

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header
EXTENDED FAMILY PROJECT | 2021

EXTENDED FAMILY PROJECT | CO VID PRO #2

This year, as part of this project, the Extended Family, we have been working with Tjon Rockon from GrandeLoge and OPEN Rotterdam on the collaborative video project CO VID PRO #2.
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map
COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH PROJECT | 2020 - 2022

Worlding Public Cultures: The Arts and Social Innovation

COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH PROJECT | 2020 - 2022

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Snap Black like us mourn like us

Amal Alhaag awarded the Akademie van Kunsten Penning 2022 & SNAP - Black Like Us, Mourn Like Us, Imagine Us

On 20 April 2022, the Akademie van Kunsten/Society of the Arts awarded senior cur

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Samoa tatooing

Barbro Klein Fellowship to Wonu Veys | Tattooing in the Pacific Archipelago of Tonga | Piecing Together an Historical and Anthropological Narrative

RESEARCH PROJECT | Tattooing in the Pacific Archipelago of Tonga | Piecin

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Annette 4
Research Project | June 2022

NWO Award to Annette Schmidt | Museum Grant for Provenance Research | West-Central African Collection

RESEARCH PROJECT 

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wampumgordel

Elizabeth James-Perry | Artist in Residence | Taking Care

Wampum jewellery designer Elizabeth James-Perry will be participating in an artist residency as part of t

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1873

1873 Research Project: 150 Years of Shared Histories

This research project uses the anniversary of 150 years of Indian arrival into Suriname as a starting and

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Depot visit

Questions of Indigeneity in a (European) Museum Context

This research project focuses on the question how to tell the story of Indigeneity, of Indigenous wo

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