Matthias Lukkes MA

PhD Candidate

Cohort/Start PhD: 2025-2026

Duration of project: 1 February 2026 – 31 January 2030

Promotor: Prof. Michiel van Groesen

Out of Africa: Tracing the Cross-Cultural Origins of African Alterity, 1570-1720

This project hypothesizes that early modern Dutch imaginations of West and West-Central Africa were crucial in creating stereotypes of a continent and its inhabitants that persisted for centuries, and that helped to legitimate asymmetric power relations which last until today. Dutch representations of Africa, in the form of texts, images, and maps, are at the heart of this project, and will be studied for the first time in a truly transnational and cross-cultural way. How did they contribute to the formation of African alterity as it became commonplace in Europe from the eighteenth century onwards?