dr. (Naomi) N Oosterman

Biography

Naomi Oosterman is an Assistant Professor of Cultural Heritage at the Department of Arts and Culture Studies, and Cluster Manager of the research group Heritage under Threat; part of the Centre for Global Heritage and Development. Her research interests are the illicit trade of arts and antiquities (with a particular focus on Latin America), the policing of art and heritage crime, 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 co-edited 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. Currently, she is working with Liselore Tissen (Leiden/Delft University) and Daniel Aguilar Ruvalcaba (Rijksacademie) on the project 3D reproduction methods in contested heritage that explores the possible uses of 3D printing of cultural objects in restitution and repatriation debates. 

She is furthermore active in several committees dedicated to the protection of cultural heritage. She is a member of ICAHM's Illicit Trafficking Working Group, and in December 2022, was elected as member of the Executive Committee of the Association of Critical Heritage Studies. She is the co-lead of the research chapter dedicated to Latin America and the Caribbean of the same association.

Naomi teaches courses on social science methods, co-coordinates the Master Thesis Class, and supervises master theses. She is furthermore 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).