Past projects

To mark 40 years of Surinamese independence, artist and researcher Sara Blokland together with FOTODOK initiated the project Srefidensi.

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

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

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

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.

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

RICHES researched the context of change in which European cultural heritage is transmitted, its future implications, and inclusive frameworks for the digital age.

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

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

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

SWICH explores the role that ethnographic and world cultures museums can play in processes of citizenship and belonging in contemporary Europe.

This project explores the role of sport in society, especially in processes of migration, globalisation, and community and identity formation.

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

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

How can the Museum re-imagine its role and responsibilities in the community in which it is embedded?

Activate is a series of projects intended to uncover the contemporary meanings of our collections for local and global stakeholders.

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

De introductie van het economisch belang van de koloniën bij het Nederlands publiek (Dutch).

Applying 'Western' Conservation Ethics onto Javanese Wayang Kulit.

An ethnographic exploration of cultural representations of 'Africa' in the Buitenmuseum, Afrika Museum.

Decolonizing Dutch Ethnographic Museums? An analysis of the coloniality of exhibiting war loot.

Sámi Identity Representation and Revitalization in Northern Norway.

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

This project investigates the art and history of the Pacific and Europe’s engagement with Oceania through ethnographic collections found in European museums.

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. 

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.

COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH PROJECT | 2020 - 2024

The Research Center for Material Culture will work

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

 

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

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.

Een complexe verstrengeling van herinneren en vergeten, van bewuste verloochening en onbewuste onwetendheid en van moedwillige maar ook onopzettelijke ontkenning.