Material Culture

Modern and Contemporary Studies

Bricks Don’t Burn; on Bricks as Culture

What could a brick mean beyond construction? In this blog, Mitchell van Vuren traces the brick through architecture, property, revolt, and culture, tracing how an ordinary object can carry surprising social, political, and symbolic weight.

Mitchell van Vuren • 23-04-2026

Modern and Contemporary Studies

MUNGANGA - a documentary

Francianne dos Santos Velho shares her experiences as a research assistant in the HERA project Night Spaces: Migration, Culture and Integration in Europe. She directed the documentary MUNGANGA (2022), which connects with her PhD project on migrant workers in Brazil and the Netherlands.

Francianne dos Santos Velho • 12-05-2022

Classics and Classical Civilisation · Medieval and Early Modern Studies

The Crux of the Matter: The Truths and Fictions of Crucifixions

How did Roman crucifixions work? And did medieval artists depict the Crucifixion accurately? An ancient historian and a medievalist combine forces to shed their light on matters of the cross.

Lieke Smits + 1 other • 17-10-2019

Medieval and Early Modern Studies

The Omval Defaced: Thoughts on Rembrandt’s Anonymous Interlocutor

This post examines a curious late state of Rembrandt's etching, The Omval—largely dismissed in the literature as a defacement or mutilation of the copperplate—and asks what we might gain from giving it another look.

Jun Nakamura • 27-09-2019

Medieval and Early Modern Studies

It’s a Small World: The Dollhouse in the Seventeenth-Century Netherlands

A small corpus of extant seventeenth-century Dutch dollhouses shares traits with other contemporary collecting practices, but demonstrates different potentials for microcosmic thinking.

Jun Nakamura • 21-02-2019

Classics and Classical Civilisation

Digging Deeper

Why spend your summer digging and carrying dirt? Because it’s both educational and incredibly worthwhile, that’s why. Renske Janssen talks about participating in the Kinneret Regional Project’s excavations at Horvat Kur (Israel).

Renske Janssen • 25-10-2018

Medieval and Early Modern Studies

Dolls for Adults

Dolls as devotional aids, liturgical props and objects of desire: on the various ways medieval adults interacted with dolls and lifelike sculptures.

Lieke Smits • 23-11-2017

Blogs

Bricks Don’t Burn; on Bricks as Culture

MUNGANGA - a documentary

The Crux of the Matter: The Truths and Fictions of Crucifixions

The Omval Defaced: Thoughts on Rembrandt’s Anonymous Interlocutor

It’s a Small World: The Dollhouse in the Seventeenth-Century Netherlands

Digging Deeper

Dolls for Adults