‘We want to add nuance to the success story of scientific progress.’

"When people talk about how Europe developed into an innovative knowledge society, the nineteenth and twentieth centuries are always portrayed as a period of progress and intellectual production. Usually, the fact that this progress came at the expense of other parts of the world is not included in the story."

Gertjan Plets is an associate professor of Heritage Studies at Utrecht University. He leads a research project called Colonial Legacies of Universities: Materialities and New Collaborations (COLUMN), an international partnership in which scientists will spend the next four years researching colonial university heritage.

Plets explains that they are not just conducting historical research into the extent to which science and colonialism are intertwined, but also investigating how universities can tell this complicated story. "This project aims to map out the extent to which knowledge production has colonial foundations, but universities struggle with telling their history. After all, the story of scientific progress is mainly about celebrating successes. Though that is understandable, there must also be room for nuance. In this project, we will try to find new language and symbols to introduce nuance into the story."

Mette Bruinsma, Richard Calis and Gertjan Plets. Photo: Koen Vacano

Not in a vacuum
In their search for answers, the researchers have devised four subprojects. One of them focuses on universities' botanical gardens, while another one delves into scientific museum collections. The third subproject covers intangible heritage and the last one studies built heritage and university campuses.

COLUMN is a unique research project thanks to its international character and the participation of principal investigators from formerly colonised countries. In total, the project brings together nine academic and cultural organisations from eight countries as equal partners. By the end of the project, more than forty people will have worked on it.

According to co-applicants Mette Bruinsma and Richard Calis, both lecturers in Cultural History, a university can't conduct such research alone as it needs knowledge networks from all over Europe and the world. "UU is not in a vacuum," Bruinsma explains. "It has relationships with the city, the country, Europe, and the world. That is how we should approach university history as well. For example, if we want to know where the money for the university buildings on Drift came from or the role academics and commercial traders played in the botanical collections, we need to involve different people with different areas of expertise."

According to Plets, such projects are usually led by European universities, without any collaboration with researchers from the former colonies. "When parties from the former colonies are involved, they are usually allowed to join a supervisory board or attend the opening of an exhibition about their country but conceived here in Europe,"  he explains. "Though well-intentioned, these projects forget to appreciate what happened in the former colony itself, so you still end up with a one-sided picture."

Nias masks. Photo: COLUMN

Masks
COLUMN's different approach is partly due to its content and partly the result of a natural movement. Plets has been researching the decolonisation of physical anthropological collections since 2009 and led the project that researched Nias masks in Indonesia.

Bruinsma and Calis were already researching the history of UU for the upcoming celebration of the university's four hundredth anniversary, which will happen in 2036, and several colleagues from other European universities were working on colonial history and heritage as well. "Several components simply fell into place," says Calis.

"Such collaborative initiatives are not only important in academia, they are inevitable. Utrecht University is part of a network that includes the oldest universities in Europe, all of which have this sensitive colonial past, possess large colonial collections, and are very visible in their cities. You shouldn't try to solve this issue alone. We need each other".

Learning from the past
The research into the Nias masks in Indonesia, which was supervised by Plets, forms a blueprint for the COLUMN project in several aspects. "In the Nias project, we collaborated with the university on the Nias island, off the coast of Sumatra, and a local museum," says Plets. "It resulted in a photo exhibition about colonial university heritage, held in the Pusaka Museum, on the Nias island."

"All partners worked together on the research, so we are now applying this equal way of working again. In the Nias project, we also had to find the right way of working together with ‘the other’. The desire was there, but we were very afraid of doing something wrong. It was only after our colleagues from Nias saw the masks of their ancestors and released their emotions that everyone could relax and the project could get going. It was a matter of finding the right language. We will take that experience with us because we need to find the right language once again."

According to Calis, it is not a matter of rewriting history, but rather developing a new language time and time again. "We come across cultural differences often. All partners have their own interests and the last thing you want is to repeat old power structures. Our challenge is to come up with something that works in, say, Suriname, the Netherlands and Bologna. That can be quite difficult, but the university has a social responsibility. We scientists are responsible for how we research the past. Ethically disseminating that knowledge is also part of that responsibility."

Therefore, the researchers hope to translate the results of the project into something that will be successful everywhere. One of the plans is a new travelling exhibition comprised of anthropological collections from the UU University Museum, the Czech University of Prague, and the University of Bologna. The exhibition has been compiled by artists and guest curators from the former colonies of Indonesia, Congo and South Africa.

In addition, South African and Danish researchers will compile a handbook to help universities decolonise their campuses in Liverpool, Pretoria and Aarhus. Researchers from Utrecht University will also set up an educational programme in collaboration with the Utrecht Botanical Gardens, the National Herbarium of Anton de Kom University, in Suriname, and the University of Bologna. This educational programme will tell a new story about the gardens.

"Today, the schoolchildren and students who go to the botanical gardens learn about biology and botany. We want the botanical gardens to also be a place where colonial history is visible in one way or another, even if it turns out to be a problematic history," says Calis.

Snowball effect
According to Plets, international partnerships like this one can have a snowball effect. "After the Nias project, all kinds of initiatives and connections in the field of education and research emerged. We didn't solve or make up for anything, but we talked to each other and got to know each other, which is valuable for all parties involved."

Bruinsma and Calis agree. "I wouldn't be satisfied if the only outcome from this project were a few changed nameplates," says Bruinsma. "Although it will remain custom work, I hope we will know what works and what doesn't. This project is about a shared history. It's about heritage, something that everyone encounters daily. It is all around you, in the buildings of our city or small things like the plants in your living room. It is a tangible thing. People should know more about this because it benefits society."

COLUMN
The international project Colonial Legacies of Universities: Materialities and New Collaborations (COLUMN) conducts international research into colonial university heritage. The project is led by Utrecht University and brings together nine academic and cultural organisations from eight countries. It includes partners from the Anton de Kom University in Suriname, Utrecht University in the Netherlands, Studio Louter, the University of Graz in Austria, the University of Pretoria in South Africa, the University of Geneva in Switzerland, the Czech University of Prague, the University of Bologna in Italy, and the University of Aarhus in Denmark. 

Utrecht
Gertjan Plets, Associate Professor of Heritage Studies at Utrecht University, is leading the project and is also responsible for the subproject "Collections of the Utrecht University Museum". Assistant professors and co-applicants Mette Bruinsma and Richard Calis are leading the subproject "Botanical Gardens at Utrecht University."

COLUMN has a budget of over 4.4 million euros and is co-financed by the EU Horizon Europe Programme and the Swiss State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI). At UU, the project is supported by Institutions for Open Societies and the Coimbra Group collaboration.

COLUMN will run from April 2025 to March 2029.