Projects

Our research projects and programs are intended to contribute to research innovation within fields relevant for ethnographic museums and their collections. The RCMC actively develops and participates in (funded) research projects with national and international research partners, and provides opportunities for researchers at all levels.

Image: Workshop for Daruma dolls, Japan, ca. 1915. RV-A390-354. Daruma dolls are often used in joint ventures, such as the collaboration between two companies or a multi-participant project. One eye is painted during the opening ceremony, the other eye is painted during the closing ceremony at the end of the project. Daruma dolls come in all shapes and sizes: from small, like here, to very large. The bigger the joint venture, the bigger the Daruma. And the bigger the Daruma, the greater the chance of success.

Institutional Collaborations

RESEARCH PROJECT

Taking Care

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

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Museum Affordances

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

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Research Projects

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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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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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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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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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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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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Research Center for Material Culture - Gerbrands lecture

Adriaan Gerbrands Lectures

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.

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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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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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Community Projects

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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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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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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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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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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