Dr D.M.S.M. Natermann
As a historian, I concentrate on the late 19th to early 21st centuries with a focus on global history, digitalisation, restitution debates, visual history (esp. photography), gender, and whiteness studies. Therein, I research modern European and African political contexts that include cultural genocide studies, memory studies, and the interplay between culture and politics. The latter involves debates on Europe’s role in the world and engages with restitution, museum- and heritage-related policies.
When teaching, I tell students the value of owning their craft, trusting their own voices, and thinking critically.
Furthermore, I enjoy being on the Scientific Advisory Board of the journal LawArt, engaging as a member of the Afrika Museum, Berg en Dal, reopening committee, and collaborating with the DvONS project on Dutch slavery history in the province of Limburg. My latest research connects digital restitution with colonial photography and cultural genocide debates.
Expertises
- visual history
- postcolonial theories (esp. whiteness & gender)
- historical, cultural, and political dimensions of European societies and their global entanglements
- contemporary debates on colonial legacies
- cultural heritage
- (digital) restitution
- postcolonial/postconflict memory in Africa and Europe
- particular interest in combining archival research with digital humanities approaches to investigate colonial photographic collections and develop new ways of making historical sources accessible to researchers and wider audiences
- postcolonial knowledge production
Career history
Dr Diana Miryong Natermann obtained her PhD from the European University Institute in Florence, where she conducted research on European colonial history and the construction of racial identities in colonial contexts. Her academic career has included positions at the University of Hamburg, Leiden University, University of Cape Town, Universita of Namibia, as well as Utrecht University, where she taught courses in International Relations, Global History, Memory Studies, and Postcolonial Theory.
Natermann’s research explores the intersections of colonial and postcolonial history, visual culture, memory studies, gender, and whiteness, with a particular focus on the historical relationship between Europe and Africa. Her work examines how colonial photography contributed to the production and perpetuation of racialised representations and how these images continue to shape cultural memory and contemporary understandings of colonialism. Her shortlisted monograph, Pursuing Whiteness in the Colonies: Private Memories from the Congo Free State and German East Africa (1884–1914), explores the construction of European racial identities in colonial settings.