Research

Research group

This English-taught Master’s specialisation in Tourism and Culture builds on the expertise of an active group of about 15 scholars who work together in the Radboud research group Intercultural Dynamics, in which tourism and migration are important themes. Within this group, senior and junior scholars from different disciplines – literature, art history, history and antropology – discuss their current research projects, invite (inter)national guests, organise conferences and prepare collective publications.

The fascinating interaction between literary and (audio)visual representations of what tourists want to see, what the tourism industry wants tourists to see, what tourist actually experience and how their behaviour is perceived by host societies is one of the recurrent themes in discussions within this research group.

Research profiles of the Teaching Staff

Anneleen Arnout is an assistant professor at the department of History, Art History and Classical Studies. She is a cultural historian of the 19th and 20th century. She has previously published about heritage and the history of museums and specialises in the history of emotions, urban history and the history of consumerism. Her current research project combines the history of emotions with an interest in urban space in Amsterdam, London and Paris between 1850 and 1930.

Mirjam Deckers is a lecturer in Art History, specializing in museum and curatorial practices, modernist art and design, and material-based artistic processes. Her research explores how objects, materials, and techniques shape artistic practice and curatorial narratives, with a particular focus on textiles and weaving. She teaches the course The Practice of Art Museums in collaboration with the Frans Hals Museum.

Lien Foubert is Associate Professor of Ancient History at Radboud University. Her research explores the lives of women in the ancient Mediterranean, with particular attention to their access to mobility from an intersectional perspective. She has published in both general historical journals, including the Journal of Tourism History and Mediterranean Historical Review, and leading Classics journals such as Hermes, Klio and Gérion. She is currently completing a monograph on women’s travels in the Roman Empire, forthcoming with Bloomsbury Publishing. Within the MA programme Tourism & Culture, she teaches the course Cultural History of Tourism.

Jan Hein Furnée is professor of European Cultural History at Radboud University. His research focuses on the history of urban leisure and consumer culture since 1800. Recent publications in the field of tourism history study the Dutch seaside resort Scheveningen, the Amsterdam Tourist Association VVV between 1930 and 1945 and the general development of urban tourism, e.g. in the Oxford Handbook of Tourism History (2025). Between 2016 and 2024, he taught the course Cultural history of Tourism. In 2026/27, he is available for thesis supervision on historical topics.

Anna P.H. Geurts is a cultural historian publishing on eighteenth- to twentieth-century experiences of time, space and movement. While studying tourists and other travellers, ironically, they keep coming back to the concept of 'home'. Their own home is the expertise group Literary & Cultural Studies. Geurts teaches the course Remaking Tourism.

Floris Meens is associate professor of cultural history. His research focusses on the history of cultural networks, institutions and fields (in particular the field of music), as well as modern travel (particularly of the Alpine region).

László Munteán is an Assistant Professor of Cultural Studies whose research focuses on intersections of cultural memory, heritage, and the built environment. For more than a decade, he was coordinator of the RICH research group 'Memory, Materiality, Affect' (MMA). He is now the Faculty coordinator of the national sector plan theme 'Cultural Heritage and Identity'. Drawing on diverse theoretical apparatuses, his publications have focused on the memorialization of 9/11 in literature and the visual arts, on American cities and architecture, and on the architectural heritage of Budapest. In a broader sense, his scholarly work centers on the intersection of memory, heritage, visual culture, and architecture in North American and Eastern European contexts.

Tom Sintobin is an associate professor and researcher at the Radboud Institute for Culture and History (RICH). His research interests include: transnational aspects of regional culture; representations and cultures of coastal cities; travel literature; identity politics of hosts and guests in the tourism industry. He co-edited the book Gender, Companionship and Travel. Discourses in Pre-modern and Modern Travel Literature (Routledge 2018) and Koninginnen aan de Noordzee. Scheveningen, Oostende en de opkomst van de badcultuur rond 1900 (Verloren 2014). He teaches the course: Theories and Trends in Tourism.

Mariëtte Verhoeven is an assistant professor Ancient and Medieval History.  She specializes in the field of early Christian and Byzantine architectural history. Currently her research focuses on the cultural history and transformation of water heritage in Istanbul, and the use of digital techniques to unlock and to activate the memorial potential of cultural heritage. She has also worked in the tourism industry for many years. Mariëtte teaches the elective Tourism on Demand and Tourism & Cultural Heritage.

Christian Tym is a postdoctoral researcher at the Radboud Institute for Culture and History. His research centres on the nexus between Amazonian indigenous cultures, histories, knowledge and politics, and Western encounters with and imaginaries about these same subjects and their effects. As part of the VICI-NWO project titled, ‘Poison, Medicine or Magic Potion? Shifting Perspectives on Drugs in Latin America (1820–2020)’, Tym currently researches the indigenous history of ayahuasca and indigenous people’s role in ayahuasca’s globalization in the late twentieth century.