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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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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COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH PROJECT | 2020 - 2022

Worlding Public Cultures: The Arts and Social Innovation

COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH PROJECT | 2020 - 2022

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RESEARCH CLUSTER | 2021 - 2023

Race, Slavery, Colonialism and Capitalism

RESEARCH CLUSTER | 2021 -

This project is a three-year collaboration between the Center for th

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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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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

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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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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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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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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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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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

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Research Project | June 2022

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

RESEARCH PROJECT

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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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Community Projects

COLLABORATIVE PROJECT

Extended Family

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

As a mission driven organisa

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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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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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Fellow & Research Associate Research

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

RESEARCH ASSOCIATE RESEARCH | Luisa Michelsen, Magdalena Wiener

In regard to the extensive coll

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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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Extended Family Projects

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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