New research by Assistant Professor Anna Geurts (RICH), The Time Between Suriname and the Netherlands: The Colonial Atlantic in 1932, digs into Dutch-Surinamese colonial history. More specifically, Geurts examines the Atlantic crossings between these two countries and what they meant for our ancestors, and, through them, for us.
Atlantic travel was an important part of life within the Dutch-Surinamese colonial system. Based on the insights of other experts, such as Carl Haarnack and research intern Talin de Jeu, Geurts focuses on how travellers lived on board. Though these journeys heavily impacted the travellers, little is known about how they experienced time. This project seeks to provide a framework for how these journeys changed colony and 'motherland' and what happened to Surinamese and Dutch travellers during these momentous weeks. Geurts experiments with the critical fabulation method, which employs stories and speculative narratives to fill in historical gaps.
With their research, Geurts attempts to unravel the passengers' lives on board. One boat in 1932-33 housed, among others, passengers Anton de Kom, Leoni Kenson and an anonymous stoker working at the Royal Netherlands Steamship Company (KNSM). Geurts is especially interested in how the passengers experienced time.
Descendants of the passengers and other people who may have knowledge about them are cordially invited to get in contact via anna.geurts [at] ru.nl
NWO XS Grant
Anna Geurts is assistant professor at Radboud University in the Department of Modern Languages and Cultures and at the Radboud Institute for Culture and History. Their research focuses on how space and time are experienced in daily life, in light of technological modernisation. For this research project, Geurts received the NWO XS Grant. The Open Competition-SSH XS grants aim to facilitate promising ideas and modern initiatives within SSH fields.