This website contains information about my work: (academic) research, advice and the organisation of projects related to architecture and art in general, and in Indonesia in particular.
After obtaining my Master-degree (1992) in the history of art from the Free University in Amsterdam, I lived in Indonesia for one year; a move fuelled by my interest in (colonial) architecture and town planning of this once Dutch colony.
Upon my return to the Netherlands I worked as independent researcher/organiser and for the Netherlands Architecture Fund. Between 2000 and 2008 I was a Ph.D.-candidate at the Faculty of Architecture at Delft’s University of Technology. The topic of my study was the making of town planning in the Dutch East Indies between 1905 and 1950.
While doing my Ph.D. I initiated and coordinated two international student workshops:
‘Transforming Asian Cities’ (2003-04), a workshop, conference and travelling exhibition (Jakarta, Bandung, Medan, Surabaya, Yogyakarta);
Sustainable Interventions’ (2005), a collaboration between Delft University of Technology, University of Indonesia (Jakarta) and Pelita Harapan University (Jakarta).
These workshops offered students an opportunity to exchange thoughts, ideas, and experiences on architectural and town planning methodologies in the Netherlands and Indonesia.
Since 2001 I coordinate the ICOMOS Student Help Desk Student Help Desk Through its national and international network the ICOMOS Student Help Desk aims at creating awareness among students about (Dutch) colonial architecture and town planning.
To further my own (comparative) research on colonial architecture and urbanism I was granted two fellowships in 2010. These grants enabled me to study at the Centre for Urban History at the University of Leicester in Leicester (United Kingdom) and at the International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS) in Leiden (the Netherlands).
From September 2011 until September 2014 I coordinate the development of an online open access multilingual database on colonial architecture and planning from the 1850-1970 period. The database will contain digital source material (publications, archives, images) related to buildings and urban plans in former European colonies and will enable researchers worldwide to conduct transnational comparative studies. The project is an initiative of the Institute for the History of Art Architecture and Urbanism (IHAAU) at the Architecture Faculty of Delft’s University of Technology, a collaboration with TU Delft Library and financially supported by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO).