Collars are for dogs. Right? For a long time, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam thought that the collars in their collection were dog collars. However, when curators started making the Slavery exhibition, they realized that such a detailed, fragile collar was not a dog collar, but was used on enslaved human beings. The brass collar consists […]
Author: Public History Student
Not Mad Men in the office, but Madwomen in Asylums
Her forehead frowned, her eyes big and bulging, pouted lips and her hair black and stringy. She looks unkempt, worried, almost scared and wears a blue scarf around her neck. By looking at her face, inspecting every inch of it, you start to wonder whether she is doing alright; she looks panicked. You start to […]
Breaking habits: The Breathalyser
It’s finally back in business: the pubs are open again, people are dancing in nightclubs and the drinks are flowing. In the countryside, people are eagerly awaiting the fair and the whole of the Netherlands is hoping that carnival will be back to normal. This is often accompanied by the necessary amounts of alcohol, something […]
THE IUD BACKSTORY
Having sex without getting pregnant? Nowadays in the Netherlands the choice is superb. You can choose between many different contraceptives that prevent pregnancy, one of these being a 3 to 5 cm small anchor that is being placed in the uterus and will help prevent pregnancy for 5 to 10 years! It is called the […]
A journey of silk
A detail of an ugly Christmas sweater? Nope, far from it! This piece of silk is over a thousand years old and has travelled all the way from Asia to Northern Europe. For over hundred years little attention was paid to these silk fragments, but now, through reconstruction techniques and detailed research, we can bring […]
A very ‘skulled’ professor
In Dutch, we say that people who have a talent to learn languages have a ‘talenknobbel’, the same goes for a talent for math: a ‘wiskundeknobbel’. These expressions literally mean that someone with one of these talents has a bump on their head that shows their special ability. Long ago, in the 18th and 19th century, […]
The Vibrations of the Past: how a Medical Remedy turned into a Sexual Expression
Nowadays, you can’t walk past a sex shop without seeing them in all sizes, shapes (I once saw one with Karl Marx’s face engraved on it) and colours: vibrators. Whereas today they are an integral part of the bedside table and of social conversations with friends, in the 19th century they were not the symbol […]
Deafness: Something to be cured?
Since time immemorial, humans have coped with deafness by using hearing aids. These were often trumpet-like, designed to focus soundwaves and channel them into the ear. However, these tools only amplified sound, and thus were only useful to people who were hard of hearing. Those who were completely deaf instead developed sign languages to communicate. […]
Learning to convert our evil spirits: mental illness and health in the Yoruba culture
If there is anything us humans can learn from the Covid-19 pandemic, it is that our daily lives are influenced significantly by nature and external factors that we can’t control. Although modern or ‘Western’ medicine helps us battling numerous diseases, sometimes finding a cure isn’t that easy or even impossible. Many cultures around the world […]
Rightful transactions? African objects in Western museums
In the beginning of July earlier this year, the Belgian AfricaMuseum (also known as the Royal Museum for Central Africa) in Tervuren requested additional funding to research the acquisition of thousands of objects from its collections. Of the 128 000 items it stores, one percent is known to be looted during the colonial era. Sixty […]