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 theme. 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. 

László Munteán is an assistant professor with a double appointment in Cultural Studies and American Studies. His scholarly work revolves around the juncture of literature, architecture, visual culture, and cultural memory in American and Eastern European contexts. He is leader of the RICH research group “Memory, Materiality and Affect (MMA).”

Tom Sintobin is associate professor at the department of Cultural Studies. He is a literary scholar, specialized in Dutch and Flemish literature since 1890. In the field of tourism he has worked on Belgian and Dutch seaside resorts, on Flemish authors visiting Italy in the interwar period and on tourists’ filmic representations of visits to the Mursi on YouTube. He is one of the leaders of the RICH-research group Tourism, Travel and Text and organized an expert meeting on this topic. He has taught the course Tourism in the master Creative Industries. Sintobin teaches the course Tourism and Culture: Theories and Trends.

Mariëtte Verhoeven is a lecturer and researcher at the Radboud Institute for Culture and History and honorary fellow at the Netherlands Institute in Turkey. 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.

Edwin van Meerkerk is a full professor and researcher at the Radboud Institute for Culture and History. He researches and teaches about arts and cultural education, cultural policy, and higher education for sustainability. He is also a professor at ArtEZ University of the Arts and Leadership fellow in the Comenius Programme for Educational Innovation. In his research and teaching, he is driven by curiosity about how people give shape to their ideas about the value of art in practice. He does this, among other things, through his long-term research into the cooperation between art teachers and teachers in primary education within the framework of the national programme Quality Cultural Education. He is also concerned with the differences between policy and practice with regard to cultural entrepreneurship, among other things.

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.