Uncovering Shared Yet Troubled Pasts¶
How should we deal with histories that are contested, painful and/or shameful? Shared histories call for shared ownership - or at the least, shared accessibility - so that communities affected are equally a part of the dialogues that shape history. This way also gives insight into the complexity of perspectives of the past. However, careless and unrestricted “opening up” of archives also risks causing harm or perpetuating biases, paradoxically reiterating narratives from dominant powers.
In this panel presentation session, Mandy Sanger (District Six Museum), Jane Hooper (Slave Voyages) and Lotte Baltussen (Huygens/Oorlog voor de Rechter) will speak about their experiences of navigating this tension. Each focusing on a different time period and geographic region, they highlight different forms of sharing these troubled histories with their audiences, touching on plurivocality, future work, and dealing with ethical concerns.
Date & time: 12 May 2025, 14:00-15:00
Location: Spinhuis Canteen (Oudezijds Achterburgwal 185, 1012 CJ Amsterdam)
Speakers¶
Mandy Sanger, District Six Museum (Cape Town, South Africa)
Mandy Sanger is the Head of Education at the District Six Museum, a museum that represents one of many urban sites of forced displacement under the apartheid regime. She focuses on youth and community engagement through creative, hands-on experiences. As the Museum is a living archive working with memory to support restitution, her work is centred on fostering resilience and solidarity, challenging societal norms of power and privilege, and promoting an egalitarian future through anti-racism programs and reimagining public spaces with a humanising pedagogy approach.
Jane Hooper, Slave Voyages (United States)
Jane Hooper is Professor at the Department of History and Art History at George Mason University, where she teaches courses in global and Indian Ocean history, as well as the history of Africa and the slave trade. Her scholarly interests include piracy, queens, and slave trading in the Indian Ocean. Jane is currently collaborating with the Slave Voyages project, a collaborative digital initiative that compiles and makes publicly accessible records of the slave trade in the Atlantic and Indian Ocean world.
Lotte Baltussen, Oorlog voor de Rechter (War in Court) (The Netherlands)
Lotte Baltussen is a digital project manager in the cultural heritage sector. Central to her projects is user research, balancing the wishes of these users with the mission of the organisation and the possibilities and limitations of technology. She currently works as Senior Data Manager at the Huygens Institute for the Oorlog voor de Rechter-project (War in Court), which makes public the largest Dutch WWII-archive.
CHAIR: Britt van Duijvenvoorde, Resisting Enslavement (The Netherlands)
Britt van Duijvenvoorde is PhD Researcher at the International Institute of Social History. With a background in philosophy and history, she currently works as part of the project Resisting Enslavement: A Global Historical Approach to Slavery in the Dutch Atlantic and Asian Empire (1620-1815), where she focusses on the dialectic between resistance and enslavement.
Sign-up¶
We invite you to join us for this session in the canteen of the Spinhuis. Please fill in the form below (or follow this link) to let us know whether you’ll be joining in person or online, and we’ll make sure we can accomodate everyone!