Academic staff
Heritage Studies: Heritage and Memory Studies
Dr. Chiara de Cesari
Chiara de Cesari is an anthropologist. She is assistant professor in European Studies and Heritage Studies at the University of Amsterdam. She was awarded her doctorate from Stanford University in 2009 for her thesis on Palestinian heritage and memory politics. Before moving to Amsterdam, she was a lecturer in Heritage Studies within the department of Archaeology and Anthropology at Cambridge University. Her research focuses on heritage and museums, modern and contemporary art, transnationalism, governmentality, anthropology of development and globalisation, politics of space and architecture, post-colonialism, the idea of Europe, contemporary transformations of the nation state and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Dr. Tamara van Kessel
In 2011 Tamara van Kessel was awarded a doctorate from the University of Amsterdam for historical research into Italian and British cultural politics in the Mediterranean during the interwar period. She has worked for institutions such as European heritage organisation Europa Nostra, and is particularly interested in the use of cultural heritage in international cultural policy and nation-forming processes. She is currently assistant professor in Cultural Studies and Heritage and Memory Studies.
Prof. dr. Rob van der Laarse
Rob van der Laarse is a historian who has been involved in the dual Master's programme in Heritage Studies since its inception in 2003. He occupies the Westerbork chair of War Heritage at VU University Amsterdam, laid the groundwork for the Amsterdam School for Heritage and Memory Studies (ASHMS) at the UvA and is theme leader of European Identity and Culture at the VU-UvA research institute ACCESS EUROPE. As a researcher, he specialises in elite studies (1500-1900), intellectual culture, the Holocaust and in the transnational research discipline of heritage, landscape and memory studies. He coordinates an NWO research programme called Dynamics of Memory (together with Frank Van Vree) and an international research project called Terrorscapes, which in 2013 was awarded the Euromediterraneo Prize in Rome.
Dr Hanneke Ronnes
Hanneke Ronnes is coordinator of the Heritage and Memory Studies programme and of the Heritage Studies cluster at the University of Amsterdam. She is furthermore involved in Cultural Studies at the UvA as a lecturer and researcher. She studied anthropology at the Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, history at the University of Amsterdam and archaeology at University College Dublin (Ireland), and was awarded her doctorate in 2005 for a thesis entitled Architecture and elite culture.
Dr Ihab Saloul
Ihab Saloul is assistant professor in Cultural Studies and Heritage and Memory Studies at the University of Amsterdam. He is also visiting professor of Culture and Politics at the Otto-Suhr Institute for Political Science at the Freie Universität in Berlin. Saloul was an EUME-Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Berlin and has taught Comparative Literature and Media Studies at Maastricht University. Saloul is predominantly interested in cultural memory and identity politics, literary theory and visual analysis, migration and diasporas and modern-day Middle-East culture.
Dr Claartje Wesselink
Claartje Wesselink is a lecturer in Cultural Studies and Heritage and Memory Studies. She studied English (specialising in linguistics, MA in 2003) and Philosophy (specialising in aesthetics, MA cum laude in 2006) at the University of Amsterdam and the Freie Universität in Berlin. In March 2014, she defended her thesis Kunstenaars van de Kultuurkamer. Geschiedenis en herinnering (Eng: Artists of the Culture Chamber: History and Memories) Wesselink's research and teaching focus on heritage and canon-formation, cultural aspects of the German occupation of the Netherlands during the Second World War, and works of art as bearers of memory and identity.