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Leah Niederhausen MA

PhD candidate

E-mail: leah.niederhausen@phd.uvh.nl

Area(s) of interest: Art History, Colonialism & Postcolonialism, Museums & Collections

Cohort/Start PhD: 2024-2025

Returning Archives – Archiving Return. Archives as Objects and Instruments of Colonial Restitution in the Netherlands

University of Humanistic Studies
Supervisors: Prof. Nicole Immler (UvH), Prof. Wouter Veraart (VU)
Duration: 10/2024 – 09/2028

Returning looted objects from colonial contexts is one of the most pressing challenges of engaging with colonial violence. Within colonial restitution, archives take a special role by being subjectable to loot and return whilst also documenting and preserving the same events. This project explores this duality of archives as both objects and instruments of colonial restitution in the Netherlands within frameworks of transformative justice. By comparing two cases of archival restitution to Indonesia and Suriname, the aim is to explore in which ways justice mechanisms themselves show continuities of injustice and how restitution and archiving practices can become more transformative.