prof.dr. (Alex) AA van Stipriaan Luiscius

Profile

Biographical note

Alex van Stipriaan Luïscius (Gent (B), 1954). Most people know me only as Alex van Stipriaan, which is also my author’s name. I am professor of Caribbean History at the History Department of Erasmus University's School of History, Culture and Communication (ESHCC) Rotterdam.  I started as a lecturer in 1986 and became full professor in 1996. Meanwhile I obtained my PhD –cum laude? in 1991 at the Free University Amsterdam. In 2005 I turned my professorship at the EUR into a part time affiliation in order to combine this with a curatorship at the Tropenmuseum in Amsterdam, which lasted for almost ten years. Since then I divide my time between the Erasmus University and (government) consultancies as well as research projects on intercultural and/or Caribbean heritage and history (education). Many of my activities and publications can be found on www.alexvanstipriaan.nl

Research

My research focuses on Afro-Caribbean history and developments in cultural heritage and arts -?particularly of Suriname and the Dutch Caribbean?, as well as on processes of creolization in the Black Atlantic.

Currently I supervise, together with prof. dr. Gert Oostindie (KITLV/Leiden University), a NWO funded research & capacity building project (2017-2021) on national identification and heritage, nation building & nation branding, on the Dutch Caribbean islands of Aruba, Bonaire and Curaçao.

With ESHCC colleague –now emeritus? professor Marlite Halbertsma, I supervised the NWO funded research program on Globalization and Cultural Heritage (2006-2011). Before that I conducted a research project dr. waldo heilbron, dr. Aspha Bijnaar and dr. Valika Smeulders on traces of the slavery past in the Netherlands (2002-2007).

Education

Apart from supervising Ma students and PhD’s I have been teaching, and still teach on a number of subjects concerning the Caribbean, its diasporas and globalisation. As an extension to that I also teach on the phenomenon of (ethnic-cultural) diversity in Dutch History.

Public History

During my experience in the Tropenmuseum, I developed extra skills in working as a public historian. I contributed to a number of television series and documentaries on colonial history, as well as co-produced films and exhibitions, which I had initiated. Among these was a project on the question “what are roots?” resulting in an internationally broadcasted documentary, a number of public performances and 3 scholarly articles (2007-2013). Another major project was a large exhibition (120,000 visitors) on Maroon cultures from Suriname, which also resulted in two books and a number of scholarly and more popular articles and book chapters (2009-2016).

Historical legacies of slavery in the Caribbean as well as in the Netherlands are a subject of my public as well as my academic work. This has so far a.o. resulted, in a large exhibition on the history of Black & White in the Netherlands (2013-14), a co-editorship of the glossy magazine PIET on the Zwarte Piet issue (2015) and more generally in my research and publications on what I call “mental heritage”.

I was one of the founders of the National Slavery Monument in Amsterdam as well as of the Slavery Institute NiNsee. In 2015 I was appointed as a member of UNESCO’s International Scientific Committee on the Slave Route Project.