dr. N (Naomi) Oosterman

Biography

Naomi Oosterman is an Assistant Professor of Cultural Heritage at the Department of Arts and Culture Studies, and Vice-President Research of the Association of Critical Heritage Studies. Her research interests are the illicit trade of arts and antiquities (with a particular focus on Latin America), the policing of art and heritage crimes, and contested and colonial heritage. She has published widely on these topics. She is the editor (with Dr. Donna Yates) of the volumes Crime and art: Sociological and criminological perspectives of crimes in the art world and Art Crime in Context, which were the first volumes dedicated to the sociological and criminological study of art and heritage crimes. In 2024, she published the volume (with Camila Malig Jedlicki and Dr. Rodrigo Christofoletti) Colonial heritage, conflict, and contestation: Negotiating decolonisation in Latin America which explores, among other things, the relationship between the illicit trafficking of cultural objects and decolonial thought.

Naomi is the PI of the LDE Global Initiative project titled Policing the Illicit Trade in Cultural Objects: A pilot in Argentina and Uruguay, which examines decision-making processes and attitudes of public policing actors in the policing of art and heritage crimes. In 2025, she was awarded a €3.000.000 MSCA Doctoral Network grant titled HERITOUR that investigates how heritage and tourism are increasingly framed as objects of risk requiring surveillance, control, and protection. In partnership with six universities and ten professional partners across Europe and beyond, she is developing a doctoral training school focusing on heritage and tourism in relation to democratisation, hybridisation, sustainability, and resilience. 

She has consulted for several public organisations, including the European Commission, ICF and the International Scientific Committee on Archaeological Heritage Management (ICAHM) of which she is also a member of the Illicit Trafficking Working Group. She has been an elected member of the Executive Committee of the Association of Critical Heritage Studies since December 2022, and has been elected and appointed Vice-President of Research as of June 2024. She is the co-lead of the research chapter dedicated to Latin America and the Caribbean of the same association. Since 2025, she is the research coordinator of the Leiden-Delft-Erasmus Programme Global Heritage and Development. 

Naomi is the current Education Program Director of the Arts and Culture Studies department and teaches courses on social science methods. She is one of the developers of the joint Leiden-Delft-Erasmus minor Authenticity and Art Crime: Methods, Materials, and the Market, in which she developed, and currently coordinates, the course Crime and Disruption in the Art Market. 

Naomi Oosterman studied Social Work (BA, 2010, cum laude) at the University of Applied Sciences in Rotterdam; Arts and Culture Studies (MA, 2013) at Erasmus University Rotterdam, and Social Research (MA, 2014) at Goldsmiths, University of London. She completed her PhD in Criminology at City, University of London (2014-2019).