Rob van der Laarse is the Westerbork professor in War and Conflict Heritage and Memory at the humanities faculties of VU Amsterdam and the University of Amsterdam. He studied history and anthropology, and graduated and obtained his PhD (both s. cum laude) at the UvA and has been affiliated as staff member with the Hogeschool van Amsterdam, and the UvA's History, Media Studies, and Art and Culture departments. He was also fellow at the European Studies Research Institute (Salford University), Jean Monnet fellow at the European University Institute (Florance), fellow and theme leader at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study (NIAS), theme leader at the UvA priority program Heritage and Identity (ACHI) and the VU/UvA research centre ACCESS EUROPE (currently ACES and VICES). In the early 2000's he founded the master programs in Heritage and Memory Studies at the UvA, from 2010-2015 headed the CLUE research cluster Heritage and Memory of Conflict and War at VU, and from 2013-2019 he was founding director of the UvA's Amsterdam School for Heritage, Memory and Material Culture (AHM).  

Research

Van der Laarse's research focuses roughly on two domains: Power, Culture and Elites, and Heritage, Memory and Conflict. He published around 100 publications and have been invited approximately to some 200 lectures and keynote talks, and co-organized also a substantial number of international conferences such as The Challenge of Heritage (Amsterdam 2002), The Dynamics of War, Heritage, Memory and Remembrance (Amsterdam 2007), The Archaeology of Terrorscapes (Helsinki 2012), Competing Memories (Amsterdam 2013), and Heritage, Tourism and Hospitality (Amsterdam 2015). 

Power, Landscape and Elite Culture 

Since his historical-anthropological PhD dissertation Bevoogding en Bevinding,1780-1930 (Paternalism and Piety 1989) on the crucial role of  political ritual, elitist power and religious identitarianism as a (Dutch pillarised) road to modernity (awarded with a Praemium Erasmianum research prize 1990), an important part of Rob's research is born from a fascination with the development, interpretation, and representation of culture, power, ritual and narratives in local communities. While exploring the remarkable continuity (and final decline) of aristocracy with the fabrication of the modern Dutch nation state (e.g. A Nation of Notables. Class, Religion and Politics (1999), political democratization and the project of the Enlightenmente cultures and transformation (e.g. Van goeden huize (2001) and Beelden van de buitenplaats (with Yme Kuiper, 2005/ rev.ed. 2014), he became fascinated by topics like the long-term cultural and territorial representation of landed power. For many years Rob explored with students and colleagues fieldtrips and archival research which resulted in publications on the Habsburg-Burgundian courtiers, the 'forgotten' nobility of the Dutch Republic, the 17th c. territorial politics of the Orange King-Stadholder, gardening, physico-theology, art and architecture, the mapping of castles, estates and country houses, and the early19th Brussels-Hague court culture of William II and Anna Pavlova (Bulletin KNOB 2010), which inspired a travelling Dutch-Russian-Luxemburgian exhibition Une Passion Royale: Guillaume II des Pays Bas et Anna Pavlovna (2013-2014).     

Purity, Heritage, Conflict and Memory

Another principal area of research concerns Europe's post-Enlightenment search for purity, control, and the fascination and fear of decadence and degeneration in modern art, culture and politics, starting with the book volume De hang naar zuiverheid (co-edited1998) and on Max Nordau's hidden representation of Jewishness (Masking the Other 1999), which traces the cultural roots of 20th c. racism and the Holocaust in cultural complexities far beyond the usual domain of political ideology. Challenged by the EU's 'identity crisis' after the enlargements of 2004/07 and the rise of authoritarian populism, Rob van der Laarse's interest has since then been shifted to conflict heritage, competing memories, and the postmodern legacy of totalitarianism and the Holocaust. He edited a (bilingual) critical heritage studies handbook Bezeten van vroeger (2005), and published widely on heritage theory before focusing more and more on the heritage and memory of the genocidal outcome of modernity's longing for ethno-national purity. The issue of the musealisation, mediatisation, staging and experiencing of war heritage is addressed in a number of Dutch volumes De dynamiek van de herinnering (2009, co-ed with Frank van Vree), his Reinwardt Memorial Lecture De Oorlog als beleving (2010/2011), and inaugural Nooit meer Auschwitz? (2012). Confronted with the new rise of authoritarianism and identitarian calls for ethnic purity, he started a decade ago a critical debate on the unexpected essentialist outcomes of the cultural community and identity narrative and stately heritage practices of UNESCO's Intangible Heritage Convention (Boekman 2011, and recently in Europe's Peat Fire 2019). His 2013 publications Archaeology of Memory and Beyond Auschwitz rethink/reframe the issue of European competing memories, Holocaust dissonances and abuses of the past in the present Age of Post-Memory and Identity. He co-edited Traces of Terror, Signs of Trauma (2014) as one of mamy outcomes of the productive international Terrorscapes in Postwar Europe networking research group. In other publications (e.g. Fatal Attraction (2015) he points at some uneasy relations between Nazi modernism and 'Nordic' landscapes and postmodern Holocaust Memory and the strongly tabood attraction of perpetrator heritage (for which he also acted as academic advisor of the Nazi Design exhibition in Design Museum Den Bosch). As to understand the geopolitical backgrounds of the current crisis of European identity, Van der Laarse co-edited Religion, State Society and Identity in Transition: Ukraine (2015) and critically commented the geopolitical and mnemonic re-mapping of Ukraine and the cultural battle over archaeological findings and public space in the EU's borderlands, like in Who owns the Crimean Past? (2016), and compare for competing Holocaust and other genocide memories in other postcommunist cases my contriibutions to Muséographies des violences en Europe Centrale et ex-URRS (Sorbonne 2016), a keynote address Bones never lie? at the Wiener Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studiën (2015) published in Mapping the Forensic Turn (2017), or an expert interview on the Zwangsarbeit website of CEDIS FU Berlin (2014). Currently he is working on the complex interaction of leftwing and rightwing identitarian narratives in post-1968 public space. 

Public activities

During the past decade Rob was a member of the advisory boards of several museums and heritage organisations, such as the Review Committee of the Heritage of War (Erfgoed van de Oorlog) program of the Ministry of VWS (2007-2010), Theme Year 2012 of the Historical Country House Foundation, Amsterdam Museum, Dutch Castle Foundation (NKS), Rijksgebouwendienst, UvA Heritage Division, the Memorial Centers Camp Westerbork, Camp Amersfoort and National Monument Vught, and trustee of Paradox Foundation (photography and new media productions). With Dirk Mulder and Jan Kolen he initated the Westerbork Archaeological Research Project (2012) a cooperative project of Memorial Camp Westerbork, CLUE-VU and RAAP as part of a wider Holocaust archaeology collaboration. He is consulted as a heritage expert by many Dutch and foreign city and memorial museums, media programs and cultural initiatives, such as the AVRO radio 1 serial Dadererfgoed (perpetrator's heritage, 2008) and the curating city's project Museumtraject Mechelen (2013). Together with archaeologist Ivar Schute he took part in Caroline Sturdy Colls' awarded Furneaux and Edgar productions Unearthing Treblinka (Channel 5, 2013) and Treblinkla: Hitler's Killing Machine (Smithsonnian TV, 2014) on the discovery of the widely discussed Treblinka gas chambers, and he is also regularly asked for public lectures, such as the ICOMOS-UK Annual Christmas Lecture 2014 in London, the Utrecht Studium Generale in 2017, and the 4th Heritage Forum of Central Europe 2017.

Academic impact  

Since the early 2000s Rob van der Laarse has been pioneering in heritage studies' research funding, which culminated in several large (inter) national research projects (see the other tab page). In 2016 he received 1.2 million euros from the European HERA-JRP/ ERA-Horizon 2020 Uses of the Past call for the collaborative 4-years project Accessing Campscapes: Inclusive Strategies for Using European Conflicted Heritage (iC-ACCESS) with an international team of fifteen academic and professional partners and five IT companies working together on assessing and experimenting with multivocal digital access to conflict heritage sites in seven European countries as the outcome of a large series of fieldtrips to European memorial campscapes (representing former Nazi and Stalinist terror). In addition, he received the same year another major grant as the UvA lead in the Horizon 2020 5-years Marie-Curie ITN project Critical Heritage Studies and the Future of Europe (CHEurope) of which the Amsterdam team participates in an international doctoral training programme with European key partners in critical heritage studies. In managing these EU projects Van der Laarse could profit from his experience as co-leader (with Frank van Vree) of the NWO research line The Dynamics of Memory (2008-2014), which as a follow-up of a research project funded by the internationally unique 'Heritage of War' program of the Ministry of VWS (for which he was a sworn policy adviser) succeeded in publishing a large number of dissertations and book volumes by means of co-matching with museums and heritage institutes. As an international offspring of these projects Van der Laarse also received an Anglo-Dutch (AHRC-NWO) grant on Landscapes of War and Trauma together with Gilly Car (University of Cambridge), and a NWO grant for his Terrorscapes research project on transnational memory of totalitarian terror and genocide in postwar Europe from Auschwitz to the 1990s Yugoslav Wars; the latter supported with a fellowship and theme group grant (with Georgi Verbeeck) at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study (NIAS) in Wassenaar. This network was awarded the prestigious Premio Euromediterraneo of the Italian Ministry of Culture, Confindustria, and the public media association in Rome 2013 in the category of best practice of transnational communication beyond the national cultural boundaries "that will have a fundamental impact on the building of European citizenship". The around 15 organised research fieldtrips to European campscapes in my subsequent HERA iC-ACCESS project (2016-2020) could thus draw from a strong basis of expertise on conflict sites and competing memories analysis.  

Van der Laarse is also a regulator book reviewer of historical and cultural sciences journals, and peer reviewer of international journals, founding co-editor of the Palgrave Studies in Cultural Heritage and Conflict (Palgrave-Macmillan), of Heritage and Memory Studies (Amsterdam University Press) with Saloul and Britt Baillie, and previously of Landscape and Heritage Studies (AUP), as well as a member of the editorial advisory boards of KLEOS (Amsterdam Bulletin for Ancient Studies and Archaeology), Virtus. Journal of Nobility Studies (Verloren) with Yme Kuiper and Hanneke Ronnes, Open Anthropological Research (De Gruyter), and from 2016-2019 Accessing Campscapes E-Journal (with Zuzanna Dziuban) and co-founding editor of its successor Heritage, Memory and Conflict Journal  (HMS) to be launched Fall 2020.  

Courses and teaching

Van der Laarse teaches at the UvA and VU University in Amsterdam, and supervises internships, tutorials, BA honours and MA theses, and PhD research on heritage and memory, museology and landscape studies, terrorscapes, competing memories and conflict heritage. See the Courses tab for more information. 

Research Projects and Supervised PhD projects

During his career Rob van der Laarse has been granted more than 5 million euros research funding, and supervises/d some 20 PhD projects at different universities. See the Research tab for more information. 

He is also regularly asked as research evaluator and assessor for NWO, RCN (Norway research council), HERA and JPICH, as PhD thesis supervisor and examiner at Dutch and foreign universities, and he was also the honorary promotor (with Pim den Boer) of Charlotte van Rappard at the dies natalis celebration of the University of Amsterdam January 2015 (for her work on the international heritage treaties and the restitution of WWII's stolen Jewish art).

Courses

Prof. dr. R. van der Laarse

Visiting Address:

University of Amsterdam, Art and Culture Department, BG 2 Campus, room 1.11, Turfdraagsterpad 15
1012 XT Amsterdam

Postal Address: 

University of Amsterdam, Postbus 94551
1090 GN Amsterdam

T: 5257278
R.vanderLaarse@uva.nl

Courses, tutorials and supervising

Most of my teaching is related to the heritage and memory (dual) master programs at the UvA and VU University of Amsterdam. I am also supervising tutorials, BA honors, and MA theses on heritage and memory studies, cultural history and cultural studies, focusing on themes like European terrorscapes and competing memories, landscapes of power, elites and aristocracy, purity and modernity, war heritage and Holocaust memory, conflict heritage and heritage of conflict, spatial-digital mapping and experience design, authenticity and identity, commodification and uses/abuses of the past, heritagescapes and memoryscapes.  

Large research programs (ten years track record)

Van der Laarse is (was), in addition to some 25 individual research grants (20-200k EUR), Project Leader of the following granted, collaborative research lines, programs and projects:

• Accessing Campscapes. Inclusive Strategies for Using European Conflicted Heritage (iC-ACCESS). HERA Call 'Uses of the Past', 2016-2020, 1.2m EUR, 14 partners). Project Lead.    
• Critical Heritage Europe (CHEurope). Marie Curie ITN Trainingsnetwork project, leaded by Gothenburg University (Centre for Critical Heritage Studies) 2016-2021, 511k EUR, 2 PhDs). Lead Benificiary of WP2 Curating the Cities and co-Ben. WP5 Heritage Management (with Chiara de Cesari and Robin Boast). 
• Terrorscapes in Postwar Europe. Transnational Memory of Terror and Genocide, (NWO project 2010-2014, 200k EUR, and ass. NIAS theme group 2012-2013, 200k EUR), PI, and PL with prof.dr. Georgi Verbeeck (Maastricht/Leuven); co-funded by Memorial Camps Westerbork and Vught, and hosted at CLUE-VUA, launched at the ITF/IHRA Conference Uses, Abuses and Misuses of the Holocaust Paradigm at the Peace Palace, The Hague, and a joined exploratory workshop in Wassenaar in 2011; supported by a KNAW-NIAS grant for the Terrorscapes theme group (6 fellows and 6 visiting scholars) in 2012-2013, the preliminary results were presented at the workshop Transnational Memory of Totalitarian Rule, Terror and Mass Violence in Europe (2013). The latest milestones are the Amsterdam-Westerbork closureconference Competing Memories (2013), the Traces of Terror, Signs of Trauma (2014) volume, and the website terrorscapes.org, managed by Dr Britt Baillie (Cambridge) and Dr Francesco Muzzucchelli (Bologna) which functions as a digital platform for international work in progress.
• Landscapes of War, Trauma and Occupation  (Anglo-Dutch Grand award AHRC-NWO Humanities Research Networking and Exchange Scheme, 2012-2014, 40k EUR); PI/PL with Gilly Carr (Cambridge University), hosted at VU-CLUE (2012-2014), and launched with the Cambridge workshop Forgotten War and Occupation Heritage (organized by Carr and Britt Baillie, 25-26 August 2012), and the EAA workshop The Archaeology of Terrorscapes (organized with Jan Kolen and Marek Jasinski (NTNU Trondheim), Helsinki 29 Aug-1 Sept 2012); the networking project aimed at building an international infrastructure for heritage and memory-research of 20th century European terrorscapes, and launched Horizon 2020 meetings in Cambridge, Wassenaar, Berlin, Catania and Bologna.  
• Dynamics of Memory.The Netherlands and the Second World War in an International Context. NWO research line, 2009-2015), PI/PL with Frank van Vree (with co-matching 2,4 million EUR). Together with the associated project War, Heritage and Memory (2007-2011) below, it included 12 funded postdoc and PhD projects hosted at the UvA, VUA and NIOD, co-sponsored by the ministry of VWS and about ten NGO's and private funds; resulting in a volume, seven monographs, and tens of articles in books and journals , accompanied by a PhD research network.  
• Oorlog, erfgoed en herinnering. Een dynamisch perspectief op de Tweede Wereldoorlog (Project Leader 2007-2011; NWO project, 400k EUR); 3 postdoc projects (6 researchers) hosted at the UvA, VU and NIOD, co-sponsored by the Ministry of VWS. Deliverables: 4 monographs (superv. with prof.dr. Frank van Vree) by dr. Esther Captain and dr. Guno Jones, Oorlogserfgoed overzee (Bert Bakker 2010), Dienke Hondius, Oorlogslessen (Bert Bakker 2010), Rob van Ginkel, Rondom de Stilte (Bert Bakker 2011), and Kees Ribbens and Esther Captain, Tonen van de Oorlog (NIOD 2011).

Supervised PhD projects (ten years track record)

• Carine Alders, Onderzoek naar netwerken van vervolgde componisten in Nederland. Promotor with Prof. Julia Kursell and Dr. Philomeen Lelieveldt (ASCA-UvA, starting Sept. 2020)
• Frieda Russell, Keeping it Real? The Authenticity of Heritage in the Digitial Era (full funded external PhD project, developed within the framework of “3D Digitisation of Natural and Cultural Heritage Oldenburg” (MoDi Oldenburg) of the State Museum Nature and Man Oldenburg (LMNM) and the Jade University of Applied Sciences, funded by Volkswagen foundation . Promotor with Dr. Patricia Lulof (AHM-UvA, starting Nov. 2019) 
• Julie-Marthe Cohen, Nazi looting and Postwar Restitution of European Judaica. Promotor together with Prof. Emile Schrijver (Jewish Historical Museum), matching grant PhD (AHM-UvA 2019-)
• Leo van Putten, Graaf op lemen voeten. ‘Stand’ in een veranderende (inter-) nationale context (Godard van Aldenburg Bentinck and Castle Amersfoort). Promotor with prof.dr. Hanneke Ronnes (UvA/RUG), AHM ext. PhD. 2018-)
• Milda Jakulyte-Vasil, Holocaust Memory in Lithuania: the Search for Jewish Collective Memory; promotor with Dr.Carlos Reijnen (Jewish State Museum Vilnius / AHM-UvA 2014-)
• Sarike van Slooten, Lost Empires: Exploring Contemporary Museum Representations of the Dutch and British Colonial Past; supervisor (promotor) with Prof. Ihab Saloul (AHM-UvA, ext. PhD 2014-)
• Vittoria Caradonna, PhD researcher in the Museums Curating the City project in the Marie-Curie CHEurope project, Promotor together with Dr.Chiara de Cesari (AHM-UvA 2016-) 
• Francesca Verga, Fill and Unfill the Blankness. Cultural Interpretations of Mike Kelley's Sites of Memory Works; co-supervisor with Prof. Mia Lerm Hayes (AHM-UvA, ext. PhD 2015-)
• Dana Dolghin, Beyond the obligation to remember: transnationalism and memory praxis in Romania (ASHMS funding; supervisor (promotor) with Dr. Matthijs Lock (AHM-UvA, defence 2020)
• Alia Yunis, Cinema between Walls: Creating Collective Heritage and Memory in the Conflict films of Ireland, South Africa and Palestine. Promotor together with Prof. Ihab Saloul (AHM-UvA, ext. , defence 16-12-2020)
• Peter Veer, Bewogen landschap / Framing the Dutch Landscape. Co-promoter with Prof. Frank van Vree and BertHogenkamp (VUA); matching project with Beeld en Geluid (AHM-UvA, defence 17-9-2020)
• Noga Stiassny, The Artscapes of the Holocaust. Comparative Perspective on Figurative Representations of the Places of the Holocaust in Contemporary Israeli Artworks. Promotor together with Prof. Petra Lange-Berndt (Art History, Universität Hamburg, defence 28-7-2020)
• Max van der Schriek, Buried Landscapes of War: The archaeology and heritage of the Second World War in The Netherlands. Promotor with Prof. Jan Kolen (Leiden) and Prof. Nico Roymans (ARCHON grant; VU Amsterdam, defence 13-3-2020) 
• Iris van Ooijen, Kampen als betwiste plekken. De hedendaagse omgang met de voormalige kampen Westerbork, Vught en Amersfoort als herdenkingsplek. Promoter with Prof. Jan Kolen (CLUE-VUA, 2010-2014, PhD defence VU Amsterdam 2016, book published Aspekt 2018). 
• David Duindam, Fragments of Memory. The Amsterdam Hollandsche Schouwburg as a Site of Memory. Promoter with Prof. Frank van Vree; NWO matching with Jewish Historical Museum (AHM PhD defence 2016, book published in AUP's Heritage & Memory Series 2018.
• Erik Somers, De oorlog in het museum. Herinnering en verbeelding. Promoter with Prof. Frank van Vree; matching with Fries Museum and NIOD (AHM-UvA PhD defence 2014), book publication W-Books: Zwolle 2014. 
• Claartje Wesselink, Kunstenaars van de Kultuurkamer. Geschiedenis en Herinnering. Promoter with Prof. Frank van Vree (AHM-UvA, PhD defence, March 2014). Book publication Prometheus: Amsterdam 2014, awarded with the Jan van Gelder prize
• Joris Kila, Cultural Property Protection: A Military Necessity? Promoter with Prof. Bram Kempers (Co-funding SNS Reaal Fund, ICG-UvA, PhD defence 2012). Book published as Heritage under Siege (Brill: Leiden 2012)
• Tamara van Kessel, Foreign cultural Policy in the Interbellum. The Italian Dante Alighieri Society and the British Council contesting the Mediterreanean, Co-promotor with Prof. Pim den Boer (ICG-UvA, PhD defence 2011); published in AUP's Heritage and Memory Studies book series 2016.

Van der Laarse was honorary promotor (with prof.dr. Pim den Boer) of Charlotte van Rappard at the dies natalis celebration of the University of Amsterdam in January 2015, honored for her contribution to international treaties on cultural heritage, illegal trade, and the research and restitution of WW II's stolen Jewsh art.