Running time: 1 October 2025-30 September 2030

The project ‘Distant Voices’ pioneers a new methodology in radio studies by analyzing the agency of broadcasters from the Global South in media organizations in the Global North. The central case study of the project is the history of the Indonesian programme of Radio Netherlands Wereldomroep (RNW) between 1945 and 1965. Making use of RNW-archives, this project uncovers the agency of Indonesian broadcasters in that period. The methodology developed in this project is meant to launch a new collaborative research agenda in radio studies and pioneers new perspectives on Dutch media history.

The project consists of three parts:

1. A fully funded PhD project on the history of the Indonesian programme of Radio Netherlands Wereldomroep, 1945-1965.
2. The development of an international network of radio scholars, with in workshops in Yogyakarta and Hilversum, and a published volume.
3. An exhibition and oral history project to uncover the agency of people with a background in the Global South working in Dutch broadcasting media.

The main project partner is the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision in Hilversum.

Lived Time in Late Antique Egypt is a research project developed by Sofie Remijsen and funded by the VIDI programme of the Dutch Research Council (NWO).

The project examines how time was used and experienced in daily life. Its overall aim is to explain how late-antique multicultural communities in Egypt managed to live together, and how the everyday practices of all men and women had a vital role in reshaping late antique society.

Adding Women to the Picture

The NWO-funded VIDI-project The Female Impact aims to map, measure and analyse the impact of women on the Dutch art market in the seventeenth century by studying the household as an economic site. Drawing on various sources, this project studies how women manifested themselves as important patrons and professionals. Collaboration with the Rijksmuseum will ensure that the research results reach millions of museum visitors, challenging the view of the art market as a man’s world and the narrative that sees the ‘Golden’ age as male-dominated.

The project, called ‘The European Qurʾan’, will study the place of the Qurʾan in European cultural and religious history (c. 1150-1850), situating European perceptions of the Qurʾan and of Islam in the fractured religious, political and intellectual landscape of this long period.  It aims to discover how deeply imbedded the Muslim holy scripture is in the intellectual thinking of Medieval and Early Modern Christians, Jews, freethinkers, atheists and European Muslims.

The team will study how the Qur’an has been interpreted, adapted and used in Christian Europe in order to understand how the holy book has influenced both culture and religion in Europe.

The project will produce interdisciplinary research through monographs, articles, meetings across Europe, a GIS-database of Qurʾan manuscripts, translations, multimedia exhibition on the place of the book in European cultural heritage. At the UvA, one post-doctoral researcher and one PhD researcher will work on this project (the latter shared with the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas in Madrid and co-supervised by prof. Gerard Wiegers and Prof Mercedes García-Arenal).

Refugees have been common throughout history, but are for the first time described as such in the early modern period (1450-1750). Integrating historical, legal and social scientific approaches to migration, this project aims to analyse the discursive invention of the refugee in early modern Europe. More specifically, it seeks to achieve three inter-related objectives:

1. To explain the emergence of the refugee as a social category in European society. It will map when, where and why particular migrants started to describe themselves as 'refugees' and trace the models (religious, political, legal) of such discursive strategies
2. To identify the agency of displaced religious minorities in forging transnational solidarity networks. By studying how diasporic communities organized themselves, this project reveals the significance of refugees in shaping media coverage, initiating humanitarian interventions and promoting a new emotional culture that focused on empathy
3. To uncover the impact of refugees on European state formation. This project will examine how the protection and accommodation of displaced men and women interacted with the ambitions of early modern authorities to expand their territories and forge confessional regimes

The project consists of three PhD positions and a Postdoc. Funded by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO), it will run from 2018-2023.